


Queers

by BristlingBassoon



Series: When we met, you'd never expect this [4]
Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Dad feelings, Domestic Fluff, Domesticity, Father-Son Relationship, M/M, Outing, POV Alternating, POV Multiple, POV Outsider, Period-Typical Homophobia, Suspected of being gay, Winnix - Freeform, adult child, being outed, period cramps ow, sort of h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28762239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BristlingBassoon/pseuds/BristlingBassoon
Summary: "He still can’t imagine sitting him down and asking “how did you meet? How did you fall in love?” - any of the questions you might ask your parents, let alone the more specific ones he now wonders. What was it like, do you still see your family, do you feel bad about it."It's been nearly twenty years since Lewis Nixon and Richard Winters arrived in Painted Post, and the townspeople are beginning to wonder. They only grow more confused when a young man arrives. When he turns out to be Nixon's son? Well. That just raises even more questions.
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Series: When we met, you'd never expect this [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2023108
Comments: 14
Kudos: 42





	Queers

**Author's Note:**

> Well this certainly turned out longer than I expected it to! I hope you enjoy it.

**Jan Sorensen**

They’re just two guys, running the feed store. Perfectly ordinary, Jan thinks, whenever she visits with her dad. Sitting in the tray of the truck outside, clambering on the hay bales as he loads them, kicking her legs against them, raising dust. Mr Nixon - dark-haired, big thick eyebrows, hairy arms - might help load them up, and he’d grin at her and make horrible jokes. Different to the ones her Dad makes - no got-your-nose, more like horrible bits of wordplay her teacher calls puns.  
She sees Mr Winters less, but if she gets down from the truck and follows Dad into the store, he’s there, fair brows furrowed, scribbling in a big book with a funny square pencil, a cat that looks almost exactly the same as him by his side, ginger, and frowning in exactly the same way.

Doesn’t seem odd for two men to work together like that. There are two men in the pharmacy, men at the post office, men at the store, men with white uniforms and rolled up sleeves frying things at the diner in Corning. Wouldn’t be so odd, but once her brother Peter tells her that they don’t just work together. They live together too.

“Yep. That’s their house there,” he says as they’re on their bikes, picking through the grass verge. She’s too tired to ride up the hill, so she’s gotten off and started walking, and Peter, with a sigh, has gotten off his bike too and is pushing it past a huge patch of ragweed.

“Where?”

“You see it?” He jabs at it with his elbow.

“They got wives there too?” Jan knows Sandra at her school lives with her Mum and Dad and Aunt and Uncle all in the same house, so maybe there’s more than one family living there.

“Nah,” says Peter. “No wives.”

“I thought you had to have one.”

“Don’t be stupid,” says Peter scornfully. “You get to choose if you want one or not.”

“You think that something happened to their wives?” Jan says, eyes saucers. Maybe they died tragically, like what happened in The Secret Garden -

Peter makes a contemptuous noise. “Why don’t you ask them?”

“Alright, I will,” says Jan, with a toss of her pigtails.

Peter motions in the direction of the long, gravel driveway. She can see a white truck parked there, with NIXON & WINTERS painted on the door in blue letters. “You gonna go knock on their door and do it?”

Jan hates knocking on doors. Besides, what if they’re cross about being disturbed? “Not now!” she protests.

“When, then?” Peter says pointedly.

“Next time I’m at the store.”

“I bet you won’t.” Peter grins.

“Bet you I _will._ ”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Peter says, suddenly leaping back onto his bike in a cloud of yellow ragweed dust. “See ya back at the house, slowcoach!”

“Peter -“ she yells, but it’s no use, he’s already halfway down the road.

She’s lying on the lounge room floor reading Charlotte’s Web, when she hears her Dad starting his truck out in the front yard. Shoving Wilbur out of her mind, she runs outside.

“Dad!”

He stops the truck, frowns down from the open window.

“What is it?”

“Are you going to the feed store?” A confused nod that sets her Dad’s hat wobbling. “Can I come? Please?”

“Well sure, if you like,” he says, leaning over and opening the door for her. She scrambles up to the bench seat, slides along so she’s nearly at his hip. “No baby chicks today before you ask, I’m only getting grain for the hens. You looked so busy with your book, I didn’t think you’d want to come.”

Is he kidding? She _loves_ the feed store, loves sticking her hand in the grain bins and feeling the funny feeling of it all sifting around her fingers, even if Dad tries to shoo her away from it, saying she’ll spill the grain. Mr Winters never seems to mind, looking up from his books at the counter and giving her a little wave. He doesn’t talk much. Jan thinks he doesn’t know how to talk to kids - some adults are like that - but sometimes that’s better than the ones who are all _well young lady, how are you enjoying school_ or talk to her like she’s a baby, saying _where’s your Mummy_ and _oh look who’s out for a big day with Daddy?_ Yuck!

She might not get much conversation out of him but Mr Winters is very happy to have her pet the cat. She asked him what it was called - Ginger? Carrots? Mittens? - only for him to look at her very seriously and say “Kenneth.”

Who calls a cat Kenneth!? Then again it’s hardly worse than _Wilbur_ for a pig.

They drive up and she scrambles from the cabin as soon as the truck’s stopped moving. Mr Nixon is outside, sitting on a bench that wasn’t there the last time she came. He’s drinking something out of a thermos.

“Mr Nixon,” her Dad nods.

“Good to see you Mr Sorensen.” He gets to his feet, putting the thermos cup down. Now Jan can see that it’s coffee - that horrible, black coffee her parents drink. Smells wonderful, tastes like boiled asphalt. She can’t imagine getting a taste for it.

Mr Nixon has a wry sort of grin on his face. “Right. Better hop back to it I guess. You need any help loading anything?”

“Poultry mix, with pellets,” says her Dad, “but I’m good to get it. Don’t let me take you away from your coffee.”

“I’ll need to put it in a sack for you,” Mr Nixon says. He turns to Jan and makes a big show of noticing her for the first time. “Oh hello, Miss Sorensen! Didn’t see you there.” He waggles his eyebrows in a silly fashion. “What do you say you come inside and say hello to Kenneth?”

She follows him over to the grain bins. Her Dad forks off, goes to speak to Mr Winters, who’s filling out his big ledger like always, idly scratching the cat’s head with his left hand. Mr Nixon lifts his head to the counter and calls _pusspusspuss._ Kenneth looks up, worms his way out from under Mr Winters’ hand and leaps down, scurrying over, tail waving like a flag. For a minute she sees Mr Winters look up and frown, as if he’s cross to lose the cat, but then the flash of a grin passes over his face and then it’s serious again, _hello there Mr Sorensen, may I help you, oh yes of course, Mr Nixon will get that for you, would you like to add it to your -_

She stops listening when the cat starts winding himself around her legs, purring like a small engine. 

“How are you, old man?” Mr Nixon crouches down, reaches to scratch Kenneth under his tiny pointed chin.

“Is he very old, Mr Nixon?” Jan asks. The cat doesn’t _look_ old, but how can you tell in a cat anyway?

“Oh we’ve no idea,” Mr Nixon says cheerfully. “I just call him that cause he’s as grouchy and sleepy as an old Grandpa.”

“You don’t know how old he is?” Jan’s incredulous. If _she_ was allowed to have a pet she’d know exactly how old it was. “Don’t you remember when he was little?”

“No! He just turned up here one day, already grown up. Started hanging around. I said “hey let’s keep him”, Mr Winters said no, it’s impractical, we don’t need a cat in the store getting under our feet, and then before I know it he’s feeding him tinned salmon and has called him Kenneth after a red-headed boy he went to school with.”

“Mr Winters has red hair too,” Jan points out. “Why didn’t he name him after himself?”

“Well we couldn’t really do that,” remonstrates Mr Nixon. “If I’m going to call out “hey Dick!” from the other side of the store I can’t really have two redheads running at me at the same time. I’ll trip over both of them.”

“Could have called him Rusty,” Jan says thoughtfully. “Or Ginger.”

“Unimaginative,” says Mr Nixon cheerfully. “At least that’s what Mr Winters said. I was all ready to just go with Red. Or Cat.”

Jan wrinkles her nose. Mr Nixon laughs, and rebalances the sack of grain on the scale. “How much did your father want again? 40 pounds, wasn’t it?”

Jan nods. He adds another big scoop and then ties off the top of the bag. She watches him lift it onto his shoulder, as if it weren’t any heavier than a baby. Suddenly she remembers the reason she wanted to come to the feed store in the first place.

“Mr Nixon?” she ventures.

“Yes, Jan?” He turns his head to look back at her, and she can just see his dark eyes showing over the top of the sack of grain.

Suddenly the question seems stupid. Like something a little kid might ask, someone who thinks that every woman is a mummy and every man is a daddy.

“Oh, nothing.”

“Nothing?” Mr Nixon’s eyebrow raises.

“Well I was just, uh…” She looks around, trying to think of something to say that won’t be silly. Feels like when she puts her hand up in class and then forgets the answer the minute the teacher calls on her. “Do you have any other pets, Mr Nixon?”

He gives a little shake of his head. “The poor old dog died recently.” He sounds sorrowful. “Ah, but he was very old.” He begins walking to the front of the store.

Jan thinks of Old Yeller and calls out “Did you have to shoot him?” before she can stop herself.

Mr Nixon nearly drops the grain.

She might have decided not to ask the question, but it still bugs her. It’s putting her off Charlotte’s Web for one. Wilbur seems perfectly irritating at that moment, running around, crying about needing a friend. Maybe he’d get one if he weren’t so much of a whiny baby, thinks Jan, losing her sympathy for the piglet. She puts the book down with a sigh and goes to get a glass of milk.

Now that she hasn’t asked it’s begun to feel like a puzzle. Who cooks them their dinners? She knows when boys go off to college they eat food in a big cafeteria, but if Mr Nixon and Mr Winters have a cook, she’s never heard or seen of one, and she hears about _everything_ here, no matter how boring - like whether or not Mr Talbot was attracting rats with his birdseed, or whether Mrs Davis’s son was ever going to come good, or if someone was going to resurface the damn road after it cracked during the thaw last year.

After lunch she gets on her bike and cycles over to the feed store, determined to be brave and finally ask. At least if the answer’s boring she’ll know for sure.

The parking lot is empty. She leans her bike against the fence, spits grit out of her mouth. It hasn’t rained in a while and summer’s already beginning to feel tiresome, especially since Sandra is out of town staying with her cousins and Peter’s busy making model planes, and she’s not allowed to go to the swimming hole without him. Sometimes it’s just plain unfair being a girl. Or being eight, she’s not sure what. A little of each. Nobody ever says “do be careful” to her brother, that’s for sure.

The sun’s so bright that when she walks into the store it feels dark and quiet. Deserted, really, except for Kenneth, who’s sprawled all over the desk, furling and unfurling his claws.

“Hello Kenneth,” she says softly, reaching over to scratch his belly. He swipes at her with his claws, and she quickly whips her hand away, but not before she gets a big stripe scratched into her arm. She yelps at the sting of it. “Bad cat!”

There’s a noise behind her. “Jan?”

It’s Mr Winters. He’s holding a cup of coffee - in a mug, not in a thermos, which makes Jan wonder where he got it from. His sJim brows are creased. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I’m here to get something for my Dad.”

“Oh?” Mr Winters puts down the mug, walks behind the counter. Kenneth looks up at him, rolls over and springs onto the floor, stalking off. “Did the cat hurt you?”

“No,” she lies, sticking her hand behind her back.

Mr Winters looks at her very seriously.

“If he bit you, you need to tell an adult, Ok? Cat bites can give you lockjaw, unless you get a shot.”

“I hate shots,” she shudders.

“Well it’s better than lockjaw,” Mr Winters says in a warning tone.

“He just scratched me anyway,” Jan says.

Mr Winters sighs, looks as if he’s going to say something, and then changes his mind. Drums his fingers on the table, looks around as if hoping someone else is going to come in and talk to him instead. “Well then, what did your father want you to get?”

“A packet of bean seeds,” Jan improvises.

“Of course,” Mr Winters says, nodding as if to indicate that bean seeds are a sensible choice. “Of course, it’s a bit late in the season for beans, but I suppose you might get a crop out of them…”

She squirms, wishing she’d thought of something else. Cabbages maybe.

Mr Winters is shuffling yellow paper seed packets around. “Did you know what kind of beans your father wanted? Early dwarf, maybe? French beans?”

“Just green beans, thank you.” He hands her the seed packet. She tries to put it in her pocket but it’s too big.

“Designed for a man’s pocket, I think,” says Mr Winters, apologetically. “Look.” He takes another packet and puts it in the breast pocket of his shirt, where it fits easily. “Well then. That’ll be ten cents.” He gives Jan a pointed look. “Of course, I can always add it to your father’s account, if you’d prefer…”

“Yes thanks, Mr Winters.”

He scribbles in his ledger for a minute, with the big square pencil. Somehow it’s easier to ask him a question when he’s not looking at her.

“Mr Winters?”

“Mmm?”

“Do you have a wife?”

He lets out a startled sound. “Well no, I don’t.”

“Does Mr Nixon have one?”

Mr Winters gives her a long, searching look. “That’s a question for Mr Nixon to answer, not me.”

She waits, feeling awkward, trying not to scrunch the seed packet. Outside, the sound of the truck crunching its way into the gravel lot, and then the further crunch of boots.

“Hey there!” calls Mr Nixon from the doorway. “Dick, you’ll never guess what I -“

Mr Winters shoots him a warning look. “Young Jan Sorensen’s just dropped by to visit.”

“Oh?” Mr Nixon takes off his hat, wipes his forehead with his arm. “Come to see Kenneth?”

“He scratched me,” Jan says.

“Oh no, that’s no good!” He strides over to the counter, steers past Mr Winters, ducks down and starts rummaging. “We got any antiseptic here? Ah come on -“

“It’s not too bad,” Jan calls, and it’s not even a lie anymore because the needling stinging feeling has finally stopped, although she _is_ worried about the lockjaw.

“Oh,” says Mr Nixon, clambering upright, looking over at Mr Winters, who’s looking a little preoccupied.

“Mr Nixon,” Jan ventures. “Do you have a wife?”

To her surprise, he suddenly laughs, a short, funny bark like a circus seal. “Kid. How much time have you got?”

Beside him, Mr Winters groans.

———————-

**John Talbot**

He has a friend in Corning.

Doesn’t see him as often as he’d like, now that he’s not travelling so much for work, can’t claim a late lunch when he’s actually pulling into a lookout, ignoring the scenic view, the only thing he’s looking for is John’s car.

But a friend, nonetheless. It’s better than most people get. 

The war was nice, in a way, although it feels grotesque to admit it. Not only gave him a way to meet new friends, but gave him something to talk about. New people, in and out, every day. You could go to the same bar and not meet the same fellow twice, which was safer, even if sometimes you wished otherwise - and people were more daring. Especially the pilots. Especially the gunners. Turns out if you’re scared you’re going to be blasted out of the sky you’re not so worried about whether or not you’re going against God’s wishes, since every trip is a potential journey into hell anyway. Might as well take it when you can.

He liked the Americans especially. They were fun. Less wound up than the Poms. Less wound up than the Kiwis and the Aussies even. Maybe just because they were less tired, less ground down. Fed real food, not rations. Hadn’t spent so damned long in the bloody war.

He liked them so much - liked one so much - that he followed him here. It’s easier living here in many ways. Lot more rain, for one. Don’t have to worry about drought stripping the life out of the fields, draining the joy from people’s faces. But it’s harder in others. Sometimes people don’t understand the way he talks, for one, and he misses the scream of the birds. Misses his Mum even, even though she’d told him to get out the last time he saw her.

Still gets letters though. She changed her tune after a year or so. Sends him pictures of his sisters’ kids, balanced on the pony. She thinks he’s living in a big city, sometimes, all those lines about how exciting America must be, lamentations about how he’s gone and buggered off to a more glamourous life without a thought to his mother, never mind she called him filthy, said she hoped he went to hell with it all. She seems to have forgotten about all of that.

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. He replies to the letters anyway. Sends her pictures of the land. None of him.

He used to think he was the only one in Painted Post.

He’d moved to the arse-end of New York State because of a line in a bar, a scribbled address on a piece of paper. One night with a handsome GI, exchanging letters for the rest of the war, finding something of a poet in the other man. Turns out he was mostly quoting, and he laughed when John earnestly praised his words. “You’ve never heard of Whitman?”

But he loves Jim all the same, and it seemed as sensible a decision as any other to go and up to America at the end of the war, getting on a ship as soon as he was demobbed. Didn’t even vomit, not once.

He nearly puked when he got there and found out Jim had just gotten married. To an Australian, funnily enough, who looked just as shell-shocked as he felt to find herself in Corning.

He kept it light at first, apologised for disturbing them, but the wife heard the voice and wanted to talk of home, and so he talked about his parents’ dairy farm, the yellow of the grass, early mornings milking, dawn chorus, and tried not to be a bloody sook about the whole thing.

And despite the best of his intentions, his swallowed promise to himself that he wasn’t going to be a bit on the side, he couldn’t end it with him. Kept on seeing him. The odd night. Weekends, sometimes. Lunch breaks. He memorised the numbers of all the public phones in Corning. Knew all the quiet spots.

Once or twice they’d make it out of town - Detroit or Rochester or New York, once even up to Canada, where he saw Niagara Falls, went up to Montreal and tried out his rusty french. Fucked Jim in the hotel room twice, then petted him, combing fingers through his hair, pressing kisses to his forehead, professing love even though he knew it didn’t matter.

But it did, it did, oh god, it did.

They even kissed in public once - well, almost. On the mountain, where everyone else does it. The shade of the trees in the dark, hearing the quiet sounds of fucking and sucking around them, from men and women and men and men and maybe women and women too, although John didn’t see any and doesn’t know for sure. He thought about doing more, in that shimmering air, but Jim took him down the mountain and back to the hotel and looked at him with such tenderness that John wordlessly undressed, lay down and asked the question with his eyes.

Afterwards, when he’d spent inside him, the warm weight of him resting on his back, Jim stroked his hair the same way he’d stroked Jim’s, and murmured, “you’re so pretty.”

“Oh come off it,” he’d scoffed. “If you think I’ll swallow that you’re a stupid bastard.”

To his surprise, Jim looked hurt.

“Well it’s not as if I’m pretty enough to be your missus, am I?” The complaint in his voice seemed petty.

“John,” said Jim with great, trembling feeling, reaching out to stroke his hair. “Oh John…”

He let him hold him.

“I can’t leave her,” Jim’s voice muffled against his shoulder.

“Yeah, I know.” He felt the prickle of tears in his eyes then, and warned himself, warned himself again. You bloody sook.

He knows he’s luckier than most. He lived, after all, didn’t he? He’s got a bloke in the next town, nobody’s bashing him, he’s kept all his teeth.

But god, is it lonely.

When he meets Lewis Nixon, he knows it right away. It’s not just that the man is suspiciously handsome, the kind of striking, constructed handsome from the movies, the handsomeness that only Yanks have, but it’s the way he swans about like a regular Cary Grant, all quips and raised eyebrows and jokes, that air of richness around him, the type of man you’d describe as _fancy._ Which is why it’s so funny that he meets him in a feed store, a feed store with his name on it, no less. Hasn’t even exchanged two words before he knows he’s a fellow traveller, although Mr Nixon isn’t exactly his type. He prefers them a bit less flashy.

He comes alone first, scoping out the town. John sees him in the bar - first leaning over the counter, exchanging words with Raymond as he pulls beers, then exchanging grins and handshakes with a few others. He has a warmth about him, an ability to fit in, to charm. Others don’t notice his hidden side the way John can. He smiles at John across the bar.

When he sees him again, he’s in a truck with a quiet redhead guy, who looks far too serious and bookish. A business partner probably. He doesn’t have any swish about him, or anything else telling. Or so John thinks, until he walks into the feed store and sees the way Nixon’s eyes dart to Winters, when he thinks nobody’s looking, and the soft look in Winters’ eyes, when he glances back. 

It’s funny how nobody twigs, considering how little they try to hide it. A month after the store opens he’s doing his rounds and finds in his mailbag a letter addressed to a Mr R. Winters, and another for Mr L. Nixon. Turns out they have the same address.

Neither of them are on the market, and John’s spoken for in a fashion, but he still finds himself drawn to Nixon, can’t wait to claim him as a friend. Despite the flashness he’s a friendly guy, and an easy chat, and he finds himself pouring out the words to him. Didn’t know how much he’d need a friendly ear until he got one, even if he’s only talking about the birds. He misses the cockies and galahs and lorikeets. Cardinals and sparrows aren’t much of a substitute, but they’re better than nothing.

While he’s talking to that handsome, Cary-Grantish face, John’s eyes slide sideways, trying to figure Winters out. He’s used to pansies, and men who weren’t but didn’t mind a bit of fun, but Winters looks like he wears long underwear and reads his bible and combs his hair in front of the mirror in the mornings and takes cold showers. Can’t imagine him sliding his eyes up you in a bar, John thinks. But the way Nixon looks at him, there’s no mistaking it.

He’d love to get the measure of them over a beer, just ask them bare-faced how they met, what they’re up to in Painted Post, if their mothers know - but he doesn’t dare. Not that Nixon would sock him one, at most, he’d make a joke, but John’s been in small places most of his life, and this town is far too small.

Neither of them have a wife. To think - to have a man and _keep him._ How do they do it? He wishes he could ask.

————————

**Flora Wilkinson**

_A peculiar friendship_ , Flora decides, five years after the two men move into town.

She doesn’t immediately realise. Friends, natural enough - makes sense that two men who served together might want to go into business, a contract formed with a handshake and shared cigarettes in some grubby field in France. They’re young and foolhardy, they’ll soon tire of bachelor life. All the young men are finding wives, if they haven’t already done so. The problem is that so many of them rush. Grab the first young lady who looks at them sideways, frontways or backwards, without a care for how to keep her, a thought to how they’ll get along. Foreigners, some of them, barely even know the language! To dump a poor Dutch or French or English woman in a small town like that! Different when it’s your own kin who move here with you, at least you don’t feel so lost - but a wife on her own like that, oh, Flora wants to grab those young men by the collars and shake them.

So it seems sensible to her, that neither Mr Winters nor Mr Nixon want to rush.

Or at least it would, if it hadn’t been five years. Then ten. Then fifteen. They don’t look wounded. She’s never heard a rumour of violent rages, or _difficulties_ the poor men might have, and she should know, what with her Bill being the pharmacist and all. After some pressing - her husband doesn’t like to be indelicate, but Flora can’t rein in her nosy streak, she hears that neither man comes in for rubbers either.

So there’s only one conclusion. Two, perhaps, or three, if she were being generous. They’re celibate, for whatever reason. Maybe it is medical. They loathe women altogether, can’t stand the sight of a lady messing about the house, fiddling with their things. But that doesn’t seem right, neither one of them seem to resent her or any other lady customer. Certainly she’s never met with a wall of hostility from either of them, and you get that sometimes when a man feels you’re walking into his space unwanted.

The third reason seems more likely, especially when she catches them off guard, and sees the fondness glow in Mr Winters’ eyes, sees the way Mr Nixon smiles at him.

She’s sure she would have figured it sooner, if she had cause to visit feed stores more often. Peculiar’s nothing new to her. Had a friend at Bryn Mawr who was like that.

The important thing is to never make a fuss. It shocked her then, when she saw Elsie crying in bed, a hunched up figure in a nightdress, face buried in her knees. Couldn’t do much but offer to heat some milk for her, and sit beside her, hand on that tight, forlorn shoulder, saying “Whatever’s the matter?” and pressing, and pressing, no matter how much Elsie tried to evade, said it _wasn’t_ a man, said she _wasn’t_ pregnant, for god’s sake just leave it Flora, just kept chiselling until she found the truth, and tried not to wince when she spilled hot milk on her hand in surprise.

She still writes to Elsie. Found another lady the same, a schoolteacher. They seem very happy together, although she doesn’t understand it. Can’t be a patch on what she has with her Bill.

So there’s a soft indulgence with which she views the men. _Ah, they can’t help it. At least they’re not doing any harm._ Far better than ruining some poor girl over a cheap drink.

———————

**Maxwell Nixon Royston**

“Of course, we’d love to have you,” comes Uncle Dick’s voice on the phone. Maybe it’s stupid to think of him as Uncle Dick now that he’s not a child anymore, but he keeps the honorific. It’s the best way he has of acknowledging Dick’s importance. After all, the man knows his father far better than he does himself.

“Two weeks Ok?” he says, lifting the phone away from his ear for a moment so he can wipe sweat off it. “It’s murderously hot here, I’m hoping for a breeze. Any breeze. Air flowing not just from subway vents and hot concrete.”

“I can’t promise anything.” Sensible would be the best way to describe that voice. “Gets hot here too, especially in August. But I can at least promise a lot less concrete.”

He laughs, and hears Uncle Dick’s answering avuncular chuckle. “That’ll do just fine then. You got grass and humming bees?”

“Wasps, more like. They get into the fruit. But we’ve got good swimming spots, and you’re welcome to accompany me fishing if you like. Nice library in the next town over, and Corning’s not too far away if the town ends up being a hair too small for you.”

“You forget I’m from Scranton,” Max reminds him.

“This is much smaller than Scranton.”

“To Hazy, anything smaller than New York might as well be a two-horse town. She’s in Montreal right now, complaining about how provincial it is in her postcards.”

“Hazy’s welcome too,” Dick reminds him. “Lew’s been asking after her. He likes her.”

Twin sensations. The glow, knowing his father approves of his girlfriend, along with a sour feeling that maybe he likes her better than he likes his own son.

“What does he think about me coming?” Max asks hesitantly.

Dick sighs, crackling down the phone line. “He’ll be very happy to see you, Max.”

“You don’t sound convinced,” Max counters, remembering the first and last time they saw each other as adults, how once his father had gotten over the initial wave of emotion, they’d lapsed into a horrible unease, with both Hazy and Uncle Dick trying to goad them into interacting, to take a walk together, to catch up and chat. He remembers the burble of easy conversation from his girlfriend and his father’s…boyfriend, he supposes, although can he really be a boyfriend if he’s fifty years old - and then the two of them, he and Dad on the porch, his Dad looking more at the dog than him, talking out of the side of his mouth, defensive before Max had even asked anything of him.

He knows it’s unrealistic to expect too much, for Lewis Nixon to fall immediately into being the perfect father, after so many years apart. Hell, he’s barely even gotten used to the idea of his father’s _homosexuality,_ if that’s what it is. It’s not as if he’s ever flat-out asked them. Hazy might even be wrong about that, although given that they live together, it seems unlikely.

“What’s the dog’s name?” He remembers his voice - weedy, tentative.

“Tchaikovsky,” his Dad said gruffly, scratching the black-and-tan mutt behind the ears.

“Tchaikovsky!?”

“Dick named him that.” The smile that followed was fond and easy, and Max hoped, _prayed_ even, that one day he’d warrant that look.

Now on the phone, he waits for Uncle Dick to say something else, so he can slide out of the conversation with some kind of assurance that he and his father won’t be on tenterhooks for the whole damn two weeks of attempted father-son bonding, stuck in a small town with nothing much to do.

“Max?”

“Yeah, still here,” he says.

Uncle Dick’s voice resigned now, but trying for reassurance. “It’s a shock to both of you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Give him time.”

“Well, goodbye then Uncle Dick, I’ll be seeing you.”

A chuckle. “Back to being Uncle Dick then, that was a pleasant few weeks back in, boy, what was it, 46?”

“Sounds about right.”

“Your birthday must be coming up then!” A delighted realisation. “How old will you be?”

“Going to be 25,” Max says.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Uncle Dick says. “We both are.”

_“Ostie de Tabarnak, wish you were here,”_ says Hazy’s postcard. _“Montreal’s nice enough! Some pretty bits. So damned hot and humid though - like sitting under the tongue of a giant dog. I like the mountain. There’s a whopping great cross on it. They do love their catholicism here. I feel like I’m about to trip sideways and fall straight to hell. Hope you have a good time in Painted Post - and hope they put a lot more effort into making the town nice than they did naming it!”_

He grins, takes some letter paper, scrawls out a message of his own. Not a postcard, it’s silly going out to buy one when you aren’t travelling. Just plain old letter paper from the post office and some yellow envelopes from work. A photo too, of the cat. He’s rather proud of that one, managed to get the wily creature in full chiaroscuro, a beam of light alighting on his whiskers. His and Hazy’s travel overlaps, but next door says they’ll feed the cat.

He takes the bus to Painted Post. Hazy has the car. It’s nearly eight numbing hours by the time you include all the stops to drop off passenger after passenger after passenger. Turns out the bus doesn’t even go that far, and he has to get off in Corning. He doesn’t even feel like he has an ass left anymore after all that sitting. Feels like it’s been worn to dust.

One hour til the next bus. Max grumbles, swears, wishes he’d worn his hat instead of packing it. Decides to soothe his frazzled nerves with a coke. Finds a payphone. Calls.

“Hello?” He’s still not quite sure of the voices yet. He might recognise his Dad’s voice in person, but over the phone it’s still hard.

“Hi, this is Maxwell calling.”

A surprised noise. “Max?” The muffled sound of the phone receiver being covered with a hand, the rustle of conversation. “Where are you?”

“I’m in Corning. Turns out the buses don’t go that far.”

“New York’s finest interstate bus service, huh? How long you have to sit on that thing?”

“Hold on -“ He hears the pips, shovels more money into the hungry mouth of the machine.

“Kid, sit tight. Give me a cross street. We’ll come and get you.”

Turns out _we_ really does mean _we_ , Max thinks when the truck pulls up, the dark head of his father at the passenger side, scanning the side of the road, and a red head sitting to his left, hands steady on the wheel, blurred through the film of dust.

He staggers over, feeling like his hip joints have seized up. His father opens the door and motions for him to hop up.

“Cosy,” says Max wryly, as his father shifts over to press against Uncle Dick, a move ostensibly to make him room, but also one with the effect of making the two guys look like a happy couple at the drive-in.

“Any bags?” Uncle Dick says, turning to look at him. He’s got these serious eyes, Max thinks. Serious, blue and worldly, like someone whose job is delivering bad news. Probably have to do extra work, those eyes, given that his brows are fair enough to not offer much in the way of expressiveness. Unlike he and his Dad, who have ones that look like definitive swipes of an inky brush.

“Yes, but I already threw it in the back.” It’s just a kit bag, doesn’t call for fussy treatment.

He had no idea what to bring. Stuck with clothes, toiletries and a couple of books, although Uncle Dick assured him there were nearby libraries, and that the house was well-stocked with all kinds of books already. He wonders what they read.

Thankfully it’s not long before they’re turning down the main street of Painted Post. He’s not sure he could have coped with much more time in a vehicle. The drive to run pelting through a field and jump feet first into a deep, shadowed pool looms in his head, along with the desire to flop down in a chair with a cold drink - more sitting, but sitting of a different kind. He hopes they aren’t going to the feed store - god knows it didn’t look like a place with a lot of amenities. Probably lacking in a Frigidaire or even a sink.

They drive straight through the town in about five minutes. If you can even call it a town. A village, perhaps.

“Well, that was Painted Post,” quips his father drily. “Blink and you’ll miss it.”

“Not long now,” says Uncle Dick, and turns off at a copse of trees by the roadway. Maples and hickory, perhaps, although he’s never been that clear on his trees. They bump their way up a gravel driveway and crunch to a halt in front of a plain looking white, wooden farmhouse with a porch and a surprised looking gable.

Max opens the door and damn near falls sideways out of the truck. “Ah fuck.”

“Alright?” His Dad clambers out behind him, and watches him hobbling.

“Yeah, fine. Leg just went to sleep.” He limps around to the tray and scrabbles for his kit bag.

“I probably squashed you, didn’t I?” Max registers a heavy, fatherly hand clapping him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, son. I know it would have made more sense for one of us to get you, but, well…” He trails off awkwardly.

Uncle Dick shuts the door with a decisive clunk. “We both wanted to see you.” There’s a friendly smile playing on his thin face, and before Max can react to either of them or get a better grip on his bag, this lanky redheaded man has pulled him into a hug.

He stands stiffly at first, feeling strong, wiry arms wrapping around him, a firm but steady pressure. His Pa has always been much more of a handshake guy, but it turns out being hugged by a man isn’t as horrible as he thought it’d be. Of course he hugged his father the first time he saw him, but that was the instinctive reaction to an exceptional circumstance, rather than something he’d expected every time, let alone from fellows who aren’t even his Dad.

Uncle Dick seems to notice his tension, and releases him, giving him a pat on the shoulder as he does so. “Good to see you, Max.”

And then it’s his father hugging him, and that’s - his arms are so tight around his waist he thinks the guy’s going to lift him up. He hugs back more out of surprise than anything, feeling jolted and strange and bemused. “How you doing, kid,” comes his Dad’s voice, scratchy and emotional in his ear, and all he can make is a noise.

“Lew, you’re going to crush the guy,” Uncle Dick murmurs.

“Oh!” He’s abruptly released, and his father awkwardly paces backwards, looking at the ground. “Sorry, Max. I, uh, haven’t gotten used to you yet.”

“It’s fine,” he says in a forced tone, because what the hell else are you supposed to say to your own father when he says something like that? Yeah you were never around so I don’t know who the fuck you are either? I think I like your boyfriend better than I like you even though whenever I think about him I get thinking about you two kissing and it’s like thinking about you and Mom making out but worse? Because at least you can waft away the idea of your parents having sex with some saying about _the miracle of life_ but when it’s your Dad and his…guy, well, you can’t, because there won’t be any miracles of life no matter how hard they go at it. Jesus! Don’t think about that, stupid wandering mind.

He realises he’s wandered up to the porch while he’s following this unsettling train of thought, and that he’s waiting for barking. No barking.

“Where’s Tchaikovsky?”

His father, just beside him, gives him an uneasy grin. “He’s decomposing.”

He can’t help but laugh, just then, even harder when he hears the disgusted noise Uncle Dick’s let out. Not that he’s happy about their dead dog but it turns out Tchaikovsky can ease an awkward moment just as well in death as in life, and as much as Max feels his absence, he’s grateful for that.

After a cold beer and some cheese and crackers, Max feels a bit better. More capable of noticing the surroundings.

He made it to the house last time, but only to the front room, seeing a sliver of the kitchen and visiting the WC downstairs, a powder room rather than a full bathroom, with a dried-up pink bar of soap and an anonymous white towel. Nothing that gave much of a clue about his father. Now, though, Dick’s drying his hands on one of those recipe kitchen towels he hasn’t seen outside of a grandmother’s kitchen, and calling from the doorway, “would you like to see the house, Max? Lew’ll show you your room.”

“You may as well see the rest of it,” says his father. He’s clutching onto his own beer, and from the way he’s holding it, Max can see that he probably doesn’t want to stop at one.

He follows him through the front room, with its surprisingly modern sofa, upholstered in a brilliant chartreuse, not exactly complimented by the more conservative armchairs. Two walls are lined with groaning bookshelves. There’s a record player, a television and a sideboard that may or may not hold drinks. He’s not entirely sure about his father’s drinking, but his mother had mentioned it briefly, in a tone so dark that he knew not to push it. Pa’s a beer drinker and always stops at two, and the drink never seemed to make him either mellower or meaner than he already was.

The kitchen has a wood stove (cobwebbed, in the corner) and an electric one, which Uncle Dick is chopping things next to. Looks like a lot of celery.

“Dining room,” says Dad in a perfunctory tone, not even bothering to enter the room. Table and chairs, more laden bookshelves and not much else. “Toilet, if you want it.” The WC from last visit. “Back there’s the laundry room. I’ve been begging Dick to get a washing machine, but for the moment we wash what we can by hand and take the rest to Corning weekly.” It’s an old-fashioned room with a big echoing sink.

He follows his father up the stairs, stands beside him on the bare landing. “Here’s the main bathroom,” he says, swinging the door open to reveal a surprisingly large room with black and yellow tiling, a bathtub and shower in the corner, big yellow vanity with a mirror with gilt trim, canary coloured sink. A large wooden dresser in the corner he takes to be a linen closet.

“This house wouldn’t have had a bathroom originally,” his father adds. “This one’s a converted bedroom. That’s why it’s so big. Must have put it in in the 30s.”

“It’s certainly yellow,” Max finds himself saying.

“Not exactly my taste,” Dad says with a chuckle, “but I must admit, it’s grown on me. Let me know when you want a shower, I’ll get you a towel.”

“Thanks.”

Dad steps back from the doorway, and gestures at one of the other doors on the landing. “That’s your room. Let me know if you need anything.” He then waves his arm at the other door, and suddenly looks at the floor, embarrassed. “And that’s, uh, our room.”

Right.

“Thanks, Dad,” he says firmly, deciding to let the implication pass without comment.

“No trouble, kiddo.”

“Oh, by the way, I thought it might be nice if Hazy could come for a weekend or so once she’s finished in Montreal. Would it be alright if she stayed in my-“

“Of course!” his father says hurriedly. “We don’t, ah, have any house rules about that kind of thing, if you’re wondering. It’d be, uh, a touch hypocritical.”

“Right.” This time he does say it out loud.

Dad waits for a few moments, as if he’s waiting for Max to ask him further questions. Max looks him straight in the eye and nods slightly, hoping they’ll be able to leave it at that. _You know that I know_ kind of thing.

“Do you need any help with dinner?” He says finally. “I was thinking I might have a shower now if that’s alright, but I’m happy to come peel potatoes or whatever you might need.”

His father grins and claps him on the shoulder. “No, that’s quite alright. I’ll sort you out a towel. Dick says dinner’s going to be about…an hour twenty? Come join us when you’re ready.”

Uncle Dick’s right. There really isn’t much to do in Painted Post. After dinner he walks the entire length of the town in about fifteen minutes, and ends up in farmland on the other side. The feed store is near the outskirts, near what looks to be the world’s most rudimentary hardware store, mostly lumber and nails from the looks of it. From what he recalls the feed store had paint and varnish and rat traps and other hardware store things as well, so between the two of them, the residents of Painted Post must be pretty well covered. There’s a small grocery store, pharmacy, doctor’s surgery. An elementary school, which looks to be only one or two rooms, and a fenced in yard. A one room schoolhouse with a town built around it, he supposes. There’s a rather impressive brick post office, and a town hall. A church, which he wonders if his father attends. Mom and Pa go to church on Sundays in Scranton. It was a pleasant enough ritual, but once he left for New York he never felt much reason to go. No great feelings either way, just a preference for reading in bed, or in mild weather, with a cup of coffee on the balcony.

Turn offs with signs indicating a trail, a campsite, one sign indicating a lake. Rustling trees. Birds he doesn’t recognise; never been great shakes at identifying them. Not much of a town but at least there’s a breeze, and he has to admit, the quiet evening air here, all pink and purple, the deep colours of the twilit fields, it has a poetic quality to it. He turns and walks back the way he came.

He wakes up a lot earlier than he wanted to. Something to do with the sun. Tries to lie there a little longer, but hell, sleep isn’t coming. Might as well get up, go for a walk while the weather’s cool. He puts on a pair of shorts and a shirt, laces up his sneakers and heads quietly downstairs, hoping he won’t wake anyone.

Well too late, because Uncle Dick’s already up, standing by the sink drinking a glass of water. He turns around when he hears Max at the door.

“Good morning!” Sounds chipper, as if he normally gets up at this time. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes thanks,” he says, stifling a yawn.

“I was just about to go out for my run,” Uncle Dick says. “You look like you’re about to head out too.”

“Yeah, thought about going for a walk.”

“We can make it a walk if you’d like,” comes the reply. “Of course, if you’d rather go alone, I’ll just do my usual route.”

“Sure, why not?” He had been thinking about a solitary walk, but at least he’s not going to get lost if he’s with someone else, and he’s going to be on his own for most of the day anyway.

Dick’s walk takes him not just through the town, but on a big loop through the fields, along the banks of a little river, up a small rise where you get a good view. He points out swimming holes, the lookout where the local teenagers like to hang out, “I’ve aged out of that,” Max points out, and Dick chuckles and says “of course.” There’s the road to Corning over there, not many buses but it’s not a bad place to hitch to if you don’t have a car, lot of young people do it. “I’d offer you the truck, but we have to do our deliveries,” Uncle Dick says apologetically, as if he’s expecting Max to want to be chauffeured.

He has a steady presence, Max thinks, as they lightly jog back to the house at around 7.30. Quiet, friendly, dependable. Would have made a great father - although maybe he is one already. Could have his own children somewhere - he and Dad might have been in similar circumstances. Maybe when you can’t see your kids anymore you cling even harder to each other, who knows. It doesn’t seem appropriate to ask.

He remembers asking his Mom why they never saw his grandparents anymore. Not her parents, not Pa’s parents, the _other_ ones he later realised were Lewis Nixon’s parents. His mother didn’t really have a ready answer, but what little she told indicated that his father didn’t see them either. He got the sense it was due to the homosexuality. Infuriating, how you can’t just go out andsay so. All that dancing around, even if his father as good as confirmed it. He still can’t imagine sitting him down and asking “how did you meet? How did you fall in love?” - any of the questions you might ask your parents, let alone the more specific ones he now wonders. _What was it like, do you still see your family, do you feel bad about it._ Should ask Hazy’s friends, come to think of it, although he’s scared they’ll tell him more than he wants to know.

If Uncle Dick notices he’s quiet, he doesn’t say anything. Just offers him coffee and makes him toast without asking, and takes a coffee upstairs to Dad. Then he’s waving goodbye, leaving Max sitting at the table staring into his drink as if it might have answers in it.

It’s a shimmering afternoon. Hot. Filled with the sound of insects, of birds on the hunt for them. The jays and crows yell periodically from their trees. Max climbs out of the swimming hole and goes to sit in the shade, selecting a book, letting the water cool on his skin.

He’s not sure how many days he can while away swimming and reading before he gets bored, but until then, it feels good to relax. Even the solitude doesn’t bother him. God knows it’d be a lot less serene if he had to spend the entire time in the presence of his father, both of them awkwardly dodging around each other, never sure what to say.

He’s not sure why it’s easier with Uncle Dick, maybe because he doesn’t have any expectations. Maybe because he, unlike Lewis, doesn’t look at Max and have memories of a failed marriage, or pangs of regret over not fighting harder for him - although he’s not really sure how the situation could have been more favourably resolved. Given what his mother says, staying together wouldn’t have worked. And Lewis already lived so far away that any visits would have been few and far between. It’s all compromise, he supposes, raising a child. Even if you’re happy with each other, and it sounds like Lewis and Kathy definitely weren’t.

He decides to pack up and walk home at five, taking the shortcut through the neighbour’s field that Uncle Dick had indicated. He disturbs the odd garter snake, which in turn disturbs him. He tries to quell his racing heart by reminding himself that they aren’t poisonous - no, venomous. They aren’t venomous. Just hard to remind yourself that sometimes snakes popping out of the grass aren’t cause for concern, when every fibre in you is telling you otherwise. The frogs are still surprising but at least they’re less alarming. He crouches down to look at one. Green, gold spotted, its little throat pulsing. So exquisite it might have been blown glass.

The house is empty when he gets back. Well, it’s only five. He forgot to ask how long the store stays open, and whether they need to do any chores or deliveries after it closes. Max settles in with a beer, and waits.

After an hour he begins to think something’s wrong. He calls the store. No answer. Can’t think of anything else to do, so he sits there, first in the lounge room, then on the porch, like a kid whose mother has forgotten to pick him up from school, and waits, and waits,

and waits.

“Spiral fracture,” says Uncle Dick wearily, when the two of them finally get home, Dad looking drawn and exhausted, right arm in plaster. Max watches as Dick steers Dad towards the armchair, and carefully eases him down into it, despite protestations otherwise that Lew’s perfectly alright and doesn’t need all this goddamn fuss, he’s not an invalid. And then the funny thing is that Max is looking at the both of them, and sees a sudden flicker of something on his father’s face, as if he’s about to cry. It’s there and gone, and he can’t help wondering if he imagined it.

“He was on the ladder, restocking,” Uncle Dick says quietly, leaning against the kitchen bench. “And neither of us are really sure what happened. He must have lost his footing. Fell about six feet onto a pile of drench tins, on his right arm. Broke the ulna, and a couple of fingers too. Funny thing is, if he’d fallen to the other side, he would have landed on the superphosphate and been fine.” He sighs, and Max sees the strain of the day in the lines around his eyes, in the furrow of those faint, red brows. “The plaster’s not fully cured yet so we’re going to have to be a bit delicate with him for the next 36 hours, and he can’t get it wet either.”

“Shit,” Max says.

“Plus now he’s as mad as a bear with a sore head.” Uncle Dick pats Max on the shoulder. “Why don’t you go and sit with him for a bit while I fix us some soup or something?”

Max takes the hint and sits down carefully opposite his father, hands him a glass of water with a sprig of mint in it. He has a bruise starting on his face, must have been from the fall.

“What’s this?” Lewis looks at the glass with what looks like his usual amusement, and then takes a sip.“Extremely virgin gin and tonic?”

Max allows himself to grin.

“You know, kid, there’s a certain irony to this.”

“How so? Did you leave the house yelling “I’m so glad I’ve never broken a bone” this morning or something?”

“Not exactly, but I did survive being shot at and jumping out of a burning plane without much more than scratches and a headache.” He takes a sip of the water. “You know, this virgin gin and tonic isn’t bad.”

“I didn’t know that,” Max says. “About the plane.”

“Yeah,” his father says, all of a sudden sounding leaden.“They all died, the others. And I _lived._ Lived long enough to fall off a ladder and have to spend my afternoon sitting waiting for x-rays and waiting to be plastered, and then thinking that I spent so much of my life actually being _plastered_ , and that there’s a joke in that. Only it’d be a better joke if it happened to Dick cause he’s never been plastered in his life.”

Max just looks at him. At the work shirt, right sleeve clumsily rolled up. His hair, which is beginning to grey. His face, square-jawed, stubbled, not the smoothness of youth, but something that speaks of experience. Bitter or otherwise. He has the startling sensation he’s looking at an older version of himself, with different coloured eyes.

“You studied me enough, then?” Dad says, when Max suddenly realises what he’s doing, and dips his gaze away.

“You think we look alike?”

Dad’s face suddenly creases into a smile. “Looking at you’s like a time-distorting mirror. Got Kathy’s eyes though.” He then reaches over the coffee table and pats Max absently on the knee. “Kid, I’m sorry.”

“About what?” Is this more guilt about leaving him as a child, cause there’s no sense bringing _that_ one up again. He opens his mouth to say something about “what’s done is done” but then his father continues -

“About ruining your peaceful vacation. Fat lot of good I’m going to be to Dick with only one good arm.”

Max looks at him with alarm. “Good for _what?_ ”

“Oh, you’ll find out,” Lewis says grimly. “That’s a man who does not sit idle, and I’ve spent a good twenty years just trying to keep up.”

Oh help, Max thinks. Oh _help._

He helps Uncle Dick wash up after dinner, while his father fiddles around, trying to get the picture to work on the television.

“Hope you weren’t planning on watching any programs, Max. Reception’s terrible out here,” he calls pointedly.

Uncle Dick makes a face. “He’s always on at me about the damn TV. The amount of times I’ve had to stop him from going out on the roof and fiddling with the aerial…” He passes Max another bowl, and as Max is drying, dishtowel getting to that unpleasant soggy stage where it won’t take much more water, Uncle Dick pauses, wipes his hands on his trousers. “Max?”

“Uh-huh? You wouldn’t, er, have another towel by any chance? I think this one needs a break.”

“Max, I was wondering if I might ask you a favour.” Uncle Dick is wearing an uncomfortable grimace that doesn’t suit him.

“Sure. Shoot, what is it?”

“Lew - er, your father, he’s going to be fine of course, but he can’t do very much with that arm. Not going to be able to drive, or lift anything.”

Max nods.

“Unfortunately, it’s a physical job. I’d put Lew behind the counter but he’s broken his dominant hand and can’t write anything legible with the other.” He sighs. “I know, we tried. Back in the surgery when we were waiting for the x-rays to come through, we gave it a go. He insisted he could do it, but - well, it’s a bit much to expect.” Uncle Dick shifts a little, then he gives Max a sober look. Must be preparing to relay bad news.

“So, you want me to - “ he interjects.

“Well, if you could,” Uncle Dick says, “we’d both really appreciate it if you were able to help out for a week or so.”

Oh no. It’s not that he doesn’t want to help, but holy shit does he feel unprepared. “Well, uh, I mean anything I can do, but I really don’t think I can be much of a help,” Max says. “I don’t know the first thing about farming.”

Uncle Dick’s blue eyes widen slightly, and his mouth twitches, and oh no, is that expression one that could be described as _pleading?_

“Please, Max. Just until we can organise someone local to come help out. I know it’s a big ask, and I know you were supposed to be here for a break from the city -“

“I’ll do it,” Max says in a rush. “But you’re going to have to help me.”

“Of course,” Uncle Dick says warmly, and swiftly hugs him, which is still something he’s getting used to. He smells like hay and ivory soap.

“Can Hazy come once she’s finished in Montreal?” Max asks once Dick lets go.

“Of course.” Uncle Dick says again. “Who knows, she might find helping out interesting. But I want you to actually enjoy your time here if you can, not spend it stuck with me in a feed store, Lewis glowering in the corner.” He corrects himself. “Actually I’m not even sure what Lew is going to do until his arm’s fixed. Boredom doesn’t suit him.”

“Hazy can be entertainment,” Max says, thinking of how well the two of them seemed to click.

“Great idea, if she won’t mind it.” Uncle Dick drains the sink and reaches into the top compartment of the Frigidaire. “Ice cream?”

“Sure, why not.”

“Ice cream, Lew?” calls Dick.

Lew lets out a short bark of a laugh. “Yeah, I think we deserve it.”

The next couple of days are weird, to say the least. He’s still waking up with the sun, so Uncle Dick takes him in the truck once they’re finished their walk and breakfast. He sets up Max behind the counter and patiently explains the general operations of the business, how to open up the cash register, the best way to make change quickly - which Max is embarrassed to admit he didn’t know before, not having worked as a shop clerk or waiter or barman or anything similar - and how to tell the various products apart, as well as a brief but stern run-down on which things are horribly poisonous and might blind or kill him. _Well why even have them,_ thinks Max, but farming seems to involve a lot of killing, whether it’s weeds or rats or cows. Or crickets. Or falcons. Or whales. He made the mistake of reading Silent Spring last summer, and the thought of all those herbicides and pesticides in the same room as him and sprayed on the fields around him makes him feel uneasy.

Then while he’s having those uneasy thoughts, his father walks in, face stubbled, which makes him look older and rather tired.

“You get on,” Dad says to Uncle Dick. “Must be running late on all those deliveries.”

“Uncle Dick’s just been telling me how the store works,” Max explains.

“Ah, don’t worry about it too much,” Lew says, with a wave of his uninjured arm. “The important thing is, just mind the fort. If anyone gives you any grief, tell them to come back later. I’ll be in the office making phone calls.”

There’s a sudden loud yowling from the back of the store. Max jumps. “Ha! I’m guessing he forgot to tell you about the cat.”

Max leans on the counter and does a mental run-through of all of Dick’s instructions. He tries to look like he knows what he’s doing, and hopes that no one will come in. He’s brought a book just in case, and thankfully for him it’s not Silent Spring, but something rather more populist and fictional, the kind of thing he’d be embarrassed to be caught dead reading. But hey, he doubts people in Painted Post will have much cause to sneer at his literary taste, if the spinner rack of pulps at the Corning bus station was any indication.

The first customer is a guy who wants a bag of fertiliser. He takes one look at Max and goes “new, huh?”, gets the fertiliser himself and puts down the money before Max has even had a chance to check the price list Uncle Dick has taped on the back of the counter for him. Max takes the money, fumbles with the cash register, and then the guy’s gone, fertiliser bag slung over his shoulder, leaving a trail of powdery residue on his shirt.

Well that was easier than he’d hoped.

The next customer is different. A guy about his Dad’s age, wearing the uniform of a mail carrier.

“Is Mr Nixon about?” The man has a quiet voice and an unfamiliar accent. Some form of British, maybe?

“Uh, I can go and fetch him if you like,” Max says uncertainly.

The guy looks at him searchingly. “No worries, mate. I’ll come in later.”

“Did you need anything?”

“Nah, I’m just in the habit of popping in for a chat when I drop off the post.” He hands Max a couple of envelopes, typed, probably business correspondence, and what looks like a catalogue of some kind. Hey then regards him with narrowed eyes. Opens his mouth. Falters. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to be a Nixon, would you? Only you’re the spit of him.”

Was it that obvious? Great, of course it’d turn out that this guy would be one of his Dad’s old friends or something, and now he’s got to make conversation.

“I’m his son,” Max says hesitantly, as if he’s not sure of the fact.

The guy grins, revealing a crooked tooth and laugh-lines. “John Talbot,” he says, extending a hand. His handshake is rough, skin more leathery than he’d expect from a postman. “And you are?”

“Max,” he says shortly. Adding the surnames will only cause confusion.

“Well then, Max. You here for good?”

What? Oh hell no. “Just come up from New York for a bit, see my Dad,” he mumbles.

“New York!” Talbot whistles between his teeth. “What you up to there?”

“I work there. Publishing.”

“Publishing, huh? Anything good?”

Oh help. He considers going to interrupt his Dad before this guy talks his ear off, but is saved at that moment by the arrival of another customer. A woman, in her sixties if he had to guess, although she’s coloured her hair a strange brassy hue unknown in nature. She’s wearing cats-eye glasses and a skirt and blouse combo in matching yellow check.

“Mr Talbot,” she says with a nod.

“Oh hello, Mrs Wilkinson.”

She turns her attention to Max, scrutinising him as if he’s a new brand in the cereal aisle. “Who’s this young man?”

“This is Max,” Talbot offers.

“Max who?” says Mrs Wilkinson, without turning away from the counter. Max can feel his palms begin to sweat. If only Uncle Dick had warned him about the store apparently being some kind of conversation spot, although he probably should have guessed, it being a country town and all. “Do you lack a surname, young man?”

“Max Nixon, I’m guessing,” Talbot adds.

“Max Nixon? Any relation?“ He can just see the top of her raised eyebrow above the black rim of her glasses.

“I’m his son,” confirms Max, hoping that’ll be the end of it.

“You’re his _son?_ ” What with the look she gives him, Max begins to wonder if he should have just lied and said he were a nephew. Maybe she thinks he’s a bastard child, that he’s not the only one, that there’s a whole army of them. She opens his mouth as if to say something, seems to think better of it, and shuts it, but the disapproval is evident in the thin line of her lips.

Thankfully at that moment he’s rescued by the arrival of his father from the back room, distracting them both with his presence and his newly plastered arm. The two fuss, which amuses him, Talbot running his mouth, and Mrs Wilkinson offering helpful hints and going on about her Bill at the pharmacy, and blathering offers from both of them, _anything we can do_. Max, thankfully forgotten, turns back to his novel, if you can call it that. The two eventually leave without buying anything, which raises the question of why they were even there in the first place.

Small towns, he guesses, conveniently forgetting the many times he’s gone to the bar where his friend Stephen worked just to chew his ear off, only buying one beer in the process. Or his friend Margie at the bookshop. His Dad seems oddly happy to see them, even if they leave empty handed, with only the post to show for their visit. It’s not bad, this job, although he expects there’s a lot of sides of it he doesn’t see. Still, two weeks behind the counter of the hardware store seems a long time indeed, and he hasn’t even needed to lift or write anything yet. Strikes him that maybe Uncle Dick has asked him to help out to give him and his Dad time together.

“Good book?” Lewis asks.

“Not really,” Max replies, “but it’s doing the trick.”

He wishes he could find more to say about it. About anything, really, but he can’t find words that seem to fit.

———————

**Flora Wilkinson**

“I must say…” Flora says, trying to distract herself from the bothersome task of chopping onions. She turns her head and blots her streaming eyes on her sleeve. Bill’s rummaging in the drawers for the can opener for his beer. If only he’d put it back where it was supposed to go, he wouldn’t be having this trouble.

“Must say what?” Bill grunts over the clatter of cutlery.

“I must say,” repeats Flora, “that I’m very disappointed in Mr Nixon.”

“Why, what’s the man done now? Or are you disappointed in him breaking his arm?” Bill finds the can opener, punches the necessary holes in his beer and immediately slops some on the floor. Flora hands him a dishrag with only the slightest scowl.

“Turns out he has a _son,_ that’s what! Now, I thought he was a bachelor through and through, but when I went into the store to see how Mr Nixon’s doing after his accident, and there’s a young man standing behind the counter. A Mr Max Nixon.”

“So?” shrugs Bill, oblivious to the implications.

“Well we’ve never seen that boy and Mr Nixon’s been here in this town for at least fifteen years!”

Bill waits for her to continue. It’s not that he’s a fool, he just never takes as much of an interest in the residents of Painted Post as she does. A missed opportunity, seeing as he ends up knowing everyone’s aches and pains and colds and creaky knees, and whose baby is teething and when flu season’s really striking. Maybe it gets tedious knowing everyone’s business when you’re forced to do so on a professional basis.

“This isn’t a soap opera, Flora,” Bill says, swallowing down a mouthful of beer. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly tedious explanation for why he hasn’t lived with his son. Maybe the kid’s been at boarding school.”

“Boarding school? What about the summers? We’ve never seen a child here, nor a mother.”

Bill shrugs. Hasn’t got an answer to that one.

“A complete lack of responsibility, that’s what I call it,” Flora says, dumping the onion peels in the trash. “He can’t have seen that child since he was five.” She turns her attention to the carrots. “I know Mr Nixon can’t help being that way, but it doesn’t mean he can just shirk his parental responsibilities like that. Would it have killed him to stay a little closer to the boy while he grew up, rather than have him be fatherless? He-“

She falters, suddenly, because Bill’s suddenly standing right beside her, giving her this look. An odd look. Almost angry, she’d call it.

“What do you mean _that way?_ ” There’s an unfamiliar dangerous note to his voice. She can’t say she likes it.

“Oh well, you know.” She really thought he had, and just never said anything of it because it’s not like Bill to pry and fuss, but that tone he’s taking, it sounds rather like shock.

“No. I don’t.” His eyes have a coldness to them.

“Shoot, Bill, are you really going to make me say it?”

“Well seeming as you’re such an expert, don’t hold back now.” He suddenly lets out a strange, bark of a laugh. “Christ, them living in the same house. Like brothers, we thought. Can’t believe we didn’t -“

“Maybe I’m wrong,” says Flora hurriedly. If only she hadn’t run her mouth. She might have a low opinion of Mr Nixon as a father, but it doesn’t mean she wants him run out of town, people jeering as he and Winters are forced to make their escape, and Winters - well, as far as she knows he’s kept all the responsibilities he had to make. Army men, both of them. That has to count for something, doesn’t it?

“He’s got a son after all, that doesn’t seem like -“

“Believe you me, that doesn’t prove anything at all,” and the tone of his voice indicates that Bill probably knows more than he'd like to admit. Although _what_ and _how_ he knows, Flora doesn’t want to ask. For once, she’d rather be in the dark.

——————

**John Talbot**

He’s never visited Nixon and Winters before, not at their house. Just drops off the mail in the letterbox by the road, or hands it to them at the store, and goes no further. But what with the whisperings rising in the town, and Mr Nixon being out of commission like that, he feels it’s worth checking in and seeing if they’re alright. Besides, they can’t be up to anything of a personal nature this afternoon, what with the young fella there and all.

The door’s opened by Nixon, whose hair is flattened on one side as if he’s been sleeping. He’s wearing an un-ironed shirt and a truly tedious looking pair of trousers, and greets John with a surprised expression, which he can’t help but feel hurt by. They’re friends, aren’t they? It can’t be that unusual to drop in unannounced on a friend.

“Mr Talbot? What brings you here? Oh hell, never mind about all that blather, come in.” He’s motioned inside. “I can’t help but notice you’ve brought something,” says Nixon, gesturing at the basket he’s carrying. “It’s, ah, a little late for housewarming presents.”

John holds out the basket wordlessly, and Nixon takes it. He jams the basket against his chest with his plastered arm, lifts one corner of the tea towel and looks bewildered.

“They’re scones,” John says.

“Scones?”

“You have them with jam and cream.”

“Jam _and_ cream? Oh, Dick will love that. Any excuse to have cream, he’ll take it.”

Nixon takes the basket and puts it in the kitchen. John, uninvited that far, stands awkwardly in the lounge room. He doesn’t want to sit down yet. Can’t bring himself, not without an invitation. “Dick and Max are out fishing. I’m stuck here. Well, I could have gone but I hate fishing. Can I get you a coffee?” calls Nixon.

“No thank you, but thanks for the offer.” He’d be very happy with tea but despite being here for nearly twenty years he’s yet to encounter an American who has tea in the house, let alone knows how to make it.

“So, ah, Mr Talbot,” Nixon says, emerging from the kitchen with his own mug of what looks like sump oil, “I gather you didn’t just come to bring me scones. Kind as you are to do that.”

“John, please.”

“John. Of course.” Nixon nods, and sits down on a frankly hideous looking modern sofa. “Come on, take a load off, why don’t you?”

“Mr Nixon,” he begins, as he tries to sit down carefully in one of the chairs, but ends up flopping down as if his legs were caught from under him.

“Mr Nixon? Really?” The other man’s eyebrows are raised, humour playing at his mouth.

“Lewis.”

“That’s better.” Lewis grins. “Funnily enough I don’t tend to prefer my friends calling me by my title. I’ll leave that to the military. And the Germans.”

Two conflicting feelings rise within him at that. The warmth of the word _friend._ The cold stab of memories at the word _German._

“Is this a social call?” Lewis asks carefully.

“I, uh, wanted to see how you’re doing. With your injury.”

“As well as can be expected.” A grumpy sigh. “Just had to be lucky and get the one arm I actually know how to use. Can barely do anything with the left.”

John smiles ruefully. “I knew a man back in Melbourne who could write Greek with his left, and only the left, and English with the right, and only the right. Hell of a party trick.”

“What was he doing writing Greek?” Lewis asks. “He part of some kind of fraternity?”

“He was Greek,” John says drily, and is rewarded with a peal of laughter.

What he doesn’t mention is how handsome he’d found that man, and how devastated he’d been when the family got the telegram.

Lewis takes a sip of his coffee. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything? Feels weird having coffee alone.”

“I don’t like coffee,” John admits. All the years in America and _that’s_ the thing he’s been scared to say out loud?

“You don’t _like_ coffee? You come to my house in my country and tell me you don’t like coffee, which means you hate it and find it contemptible and wish you could tip it all into the ocean?” Lewis’ demanding tone would be intimidating if he didn’t look so damn amused.

“Something like that.” He fidgets.

“So. I gather you didn’t come here to talk about coffee either.” Lewis is giving him this _look,_ like he can peer directly into his mind. It’s unnerving, but at the same time, John feels an incredible urge to unburden himself. All those careful, dodging conversations, veiled words in letters, making sure he never looks too long at anyone who’ll pick up on it, leaving ten minutes before Jim or out the back door, false names at hotels. He’s just so tired of it. 

I’m camp, he wants to say, but instead what comes out is “There’s been some talk.”

“Oh?” says Lewis archly, and god, if people weren’t already theorising about his proclivities, they’d know it from that tone.

“Down in the pub. I, uh, just thought I’d warn you.” He clears his throat uncomfortably. “It could get ugly.”

To his surprise, Lewis laughs. “They can talk all they like. Who knows, it might give them some entertainment.”

“I’m serious!” John drops his voice instinctively, even though there’s no possibility of anyone hearing them, unless the FBI are somehow lurking at the door, wanting to gather evidence oflavender behaviour. Seems unlikely. John might have a government job, in a fashion, but Lewis is his own boss. Besides, the town busybodies, headed up by Mrs Wilkinson, would more than give the FBI a run for their money.

“John, I’m touched by your concern, but I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

“People might take their business elsewhere,” warns John.

“Oh, they’ll get tired of it. They’ve known us for what, fifteen years? Twenty? Yeah, they might be a little squeamish at first, a little too fixated on thinking about how screwing Dick somehow ended up with me getting a son or whatever the hell they’ve cooked up in the deepest recesses of their minds, but they’ll either get over it or they won’t, and we’ll deal with that as it comes.”

John feels himself colouring at Lewis’ rather explicit speech, but he manages to swallow down any startled noises he might have otherwise made. “People can be pretty nasty.”

“What, you think I don’t know?”

He can’t think of anything to say to that, and waits for Lewis to do anything other than look at him with that odd expression, half amusement, half exasperation, all of it inappropriate. Unfortunately, what Lewis does is keep talking.

“I’m going to ask you this once, and then never again. Are you afraid for us, John, or for yourself?”

And there it is. His heart races under that dark gaze. Lewis waits, with all the patience of a cat looking into a fishpond, waiting to hook something out. Say it. He can’t say it. He has to.

“I have a friend.”

Lewis crosses his legs at the ankle and puts down his coffee cup with a decisive clunk. “I thought as much.”

Is he really that transparent? Oh god. He buries his face in his hands.

The next thing he hears is a heavy sigh. “I suppose I haven’t been much of a friend to you, have I?”

Now that was _not_ the response he expected.

He feels a pressure on his shoulder, and realises that Lewis is giving him a friendly pat. No lingering, he notes. Nothing that can be misconstrued. Just a good, old, knockabout bit of friendliness that just happens to be between two faggots, one apparently living a pretty damn good life and one wondering if he was a fool to even try to make it work with a man.

“I mean it, John. Christ, two of us in the same town and I never bothered to do much more than chat to you about god knows what, sparrows?”

John lets out a shaky laugh into his palm, and takes his hands away.

“This friend of yours,” Lewis says casually, as if they were just talking about a bloke John plays the odd round of pool with, “is he worth it?”

Is he? Years ago, shivering with excitement, he’d been so sure he could swear on it. At first it had all seemed exciting, all the nights, the looking over your shoulder and rutting in cars, and sometimes he could convince himself that the clandestine nature of it was what made it good. Who the hell wants to have wedding-night sex with some girl who doesn’t even know where she’s supposed to put it when you can have someone look at you with lust in their eyes, shove down your pants and take you in their mouth, who’s so damned wild for you that he’ll do it anywhere and beg for more afterwards? And after what had happened at home, fuck them all, why the hell not follow this Yank across the world and start new somewhere else? He made a go of it, hadn’t he? Got a decent job, didn’t have to marry to impress anyone, gets to eat what he wants and do what he wants, and god, the way men gripe about their wives, it’s easy to convince himself he’s got the better deal.

But no. Now that he knows Lewis Nixon, he feels he’s missed out on a great deal.

It’s not that he wants to fuck him - although he would have back in the war, if he’d have had him, it’s more that it hurts to think that Jim doesn’t want him the way that Lewis might have. If he’d been Dick Winters. If only he were someone else.

“You’re a long way from home,” Lewis says quietly. “Did you follow him here?”

John nods. “Not much of a home anymore in any case.”

“I’ve never seen this friend, and I’ve known you for more than a decade.”

“He likes to be careful,” John says, feeling the need to come to Jim’s defence. “He’s got a wife and family.” It’s understandable, isn’t it?

“Well there’s careful, and there’s careful.”

He laughs bitterly. “Oh, what would you know?”

It’s a poor choice of words, and Lewis’ eyes flash with anger.

“You know that boy out there? Max?”

John nods, not wanting to meet the other man’s eyes.

“I didn’t see him for seventeen years, and that wasn’t my choice.”

“Oh.”

“You know what else? I’m supposed to be an heir of a chemical company. There’s a _town_ named after my grandfather! My sister went to coming out balls! I could have spent the whole damn war behind a desk if I wanted!”

What? He thought the rich patrician manners were an affectation, same as all the poor scrappy kids who got themselves out of Surry Hills or Lon and dressed themselves in cheap finery and styled their speech on society’s best, but on reflection, if Lewis were a farm boy or working class, why the hell wouldn’t he act that way in a town where everybody else is? Acting establishment here only makes him stick out more, not less.

Lewis is giving him a strange, calculating look.

“You’re probably the only person who hasn’t figured out I’m the prodigal son who never went back, aren’t you?”

A bit of a misremembering of the story of the prodigal son, John thinks, but he gets the picture. “So what happened?”

“Well, I gave it up, didn’t I? For him.”

“What, so you’re saying I need to storm in and tell my friend to dump his wife and never see his kids again just so we have the privilege of everyone in town making sneering comments about us?”

It doesn’t seem fair for Lewis to judge Jim so much, especially now that John knows he must have been rich, and all that money can’t have just vanished overnight, no matter how much he shocked his precious parents. Doing that, living like that, that’s just not something ordinary men can do. Especially not here.

“I’m not telling you how to live your life,” Lewis says evenly, in a tone that doesn’t quite mask his anger, “but you don’t seem like you’re having a great time of it.” Another pat, this time more of a thump. “Take my advice. Have a little self-respect.”

“Oh hell,” John swears, getting up and pacing, feeling hot and cranky and overwhelmed. If he’s not careful he might punch him, and it’s just wrong to punch a guy who can’t hit back.

Lewis keeps up that steady look. “I can’t help but think you’re angry at the wrong guy.”

Why does he have to be so goddamn _right?_ It’s like someone peering directly into your head.

“How’d you do it anyway?”

The question comes out angrier than he intended. All the time he wanted to ask it in good humour, out of genuine curiosity and hope for himself, and now he’s wielding it like it’s a weapon.

To his surprise, Lewis doesn’t react in kind, just looks up at him through those long dark eyelashes.

“You know, John, I honestly couldn’t tell you. It’s just luck, I guess. I join the army and who do I meet at training but him, and before I can even form an opinion he makes a friend of me, and I fall hard.” A chuckle at this, fond remembrances no doubt. “Only took him three years before he figured it out.”

Three years? He must have had an awful lot of patience. John made most of his friends in a night, and if they could make it past the physical, they went from there. Three years of torture, it sounds like, although going off what he’s seen of Dick Winters, it doesn’t surprise him that the man might not be easy to pin down.

“You know,’ Lewis says suddenly, as if the thought as just occurred to him. “I used to think you liked him. Was all ready to yell _hands off, I worked hard on that one,_ if it weren’t for the fact that Dick wouldn’t have budged.”

John splutters. “No, it wasn’t that! No, I just…I took one look at you and knew. But him, well, I used to think “why’s that guy hanging out with a queer, he looks like he should be delivering sermons.” Just couldn’t figure him out. I’d keep looking at him, thinking _who is that guy?_ Then when I noticed _you_ looking at him, and him looking at you, I got it, but you’re still…an odd pair, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“Well while we’re being frank,” Lewis says, a smile playing on his lips, “I have no interest in birds. At all.”

John laughs. “You’d be interested in birds if you saw the ones I grew up with. Here, they’re mostly little brown things you need a telescope to see. At home they’re the size of your forearm, they sit on the ground and _scream.”_

“Sounds a headache waiting to happen.”

“You know what? I miss the bloody screaming.”

The door opens, and two men come in, sunburned, holding rods and tackle and a cooler and all the various other clutter you need in order to wrench a fish out of the water. If Dick’s surprised to see John he doesn’t mention it, just says hello and gives him a handshake, a friendly smile on his reddened face. The son hangs back, clutching a battered paperback. Oddly shy, John thinks, not anything like his father.

“Catch anything?” he finds himself saying.

“Oh, one,” says Dick cheerfully, opening up the cooler to show a comically small trout, probably only just over the minimum size limit. 

“Nice to see you both,” John says, “although I’d better be off. Wouldn’t want to interrupt your tea.”

Blank looks all round.

He corrects himself. “Dinner.”

“Mr Talbot,” the kid says suddenly, “Where are you from, exactly?”

“Wagga,” John says, the way that Americans always say Chicago or Huntington or Lexington or Minneapolis instead of just saying America, like they think their damn continent’s the centre of the world and everyone else must know the placement of every single steel town in every one of their fifty states (too many!) Let them figure on that. He grins at their confused faces.

“John’s made us some scones,” Lewis says.

Dick looks puzzled.

“You have them with jam and cream.”

To his amusement, Dick’s eyes light up like a kid who’s just won a prize at the fair. “Cream? Oh, that sounds good.”

“No problem,” says John, and shows himself out, feeling oddly better than he has in years, as if he’s just purged himself and brought up all the poison. A real ipecac for the soul, is Lewis Nixon, even if it tastes just as bad coming up as it did going down. He hopes they like the scones.

—————-

**Maxwell Nixon Royston**

They’re about to go into work, all three of them, and then in the afternoon Hazy’s going to join them. Saturday, so they’ll finish at two, but he’s running a bit behind with getting ready. It’s harder when there’s only one shower and everyone needs to be ready at the same time. Hell though, it’s only a feed store, if he uses a washcloth he can skip the shower, but he can’t face going to work with scummy teeth.

Someone’s still in the bathroom, but he can’t hear the water running. He knocks on the doorframe. “Hey, anyone in there?”

No answer.

“You mind if I get my toothbrush?”

“Sure,” comes his father’s voice, sounding a little tightly wound. He opens the door, unsure of what he’s about to see.

His father’s standing before the basin, which is full of sudsy water, dark flecks rimming the edges. His left arm is braced against the vanity. He’s shirtless, with a towel draped over his out-of-commission arm and shoulder, and beside him, holding his jaw carefully in his fingertips, is Uncle Dick.

“Hold still,” he hears the murmur, and then the quiet sounds of razor gliding across cheek, splashing in the rinse water, the blade leaving clean lines in the foam on his father’s face. His father tips his chin back and Dick carefully manoeuvres the razor along the line of his throat.

“Your father tried to shave this morning,” murmurs Dick, eyes still fixed on Lewis’ neck, ‘but it turns out it’s not a job best done left-handed.” 

Max looks again. One side of his father’s face is marked with nicks and spots of blood. The other side, in the mirror, smooth, the lines in the foam clean and decisive.

“So he’s playing barber,” Lewis says, in that same tight voice.

The way Dick’s eyes are on his father’s face, it’s oddly intimate. Nothing lewd about it, just a soft, fond expression. Caring, he’d call it.

“There we are,” says Uncle Dick, with a last swish of the razor. He reaches for a washcloth, empties the basin. “I’d go at those cuts with a styptic pencil if I were you.”

“Damn the stupid pencil,” Dad grumbles. “It’s not even shaped like a pencil. False advertising.”

“Well it’ll stop the bleeding,” Dick counters.

“It’s a shaving cut, Dick, I’m hardly likely to bleed out on the way to work.”

Max watches for a few minutes as this lanky redheaded guy wipes down his father’s face gently. Lewis turns his face into the steamy cloth and closes his eyes, and they still for a moment, as if they’re alone, and then the moment’s broken when he reaches up and takes the cloth from Dick, grumbling something about not being so damned right handed that he can’t even use a towel.

“Hey, uh,” Max ventures, trying to find the right way to reach behind the two of them and grab his toothbrush.

“Oh, sorry. Of course, Max. We’re nearly done anyway.” Uncle Dick gently steers Dad to the side, and gives over the basin.

As Max brushes his teeth he looks at the men in the mirror out of the corner of his eye, and thinks _he must really love him._ It sparks him also as a great sign of trust that neither of them seem bothered by him seeing this and knowing what many would regard as the worst aspects of his father. The lost years still sting, but now they seem to sting a little less. And Hazy’s right. The absence wasn’t due to apathy, or disinterest in his son. Shame, maybe. Disgust from Mom and Pa, certainly.

At least this is a real reason.

—————-

**Dick Winters**

Hazy’s certainly a rare young lady, Dick thinks, watching her and Lew engaged in playful verbal sparring while he tries to ignore the urge to start dinner. Very different from Max, whose quiet bookish ways remind him not so much of Lewis, as of himself.

Max’s girlfriend blustered in at two-thirty, not long after they’d shut up shop and gone home. It’d been an unusual day in the store. Quieter than normal, and with a strange, hostile atmosphere from some of the regulars. Some of the men refused to meet Dick’s eye when they settled up, and even the most garrulous of them were monosyllabic. He’s not sure he can explain the sudden change, unless the town is so hostile to outsiders that the presence of Max upsets them. Seems unlikely, although he did attract a few curious stares, which made the poor kid colour and fidget and look as if he longed to follow Kenneth into one of his many hiding places.

Talbot drops by and looks him directly in the face for once. Gives him his mail, but doesn’t chat. Looks concerned, says “how are you?” and when Dick says “fine,” distractedly, he nods and leaves.

He’s glad Hazy’s arrived. A distraction, Max had said, and she’s doing a damned fine job of taking their mind off things.

“Here!” she says triumphantly, wielding a big square box. “French Canadian monopoly.”

Lewis groans.

“Yes! After dinner I’m setting this up in the dining room and we’ll all play until we’re bankrupt.”

“What _is_ dinner, by the way?”

“I’m getting to that,” Hazy says grandly.

“And what were you doing in Montreal exactly?”

“What are you, the customs inspector?” Hazy gives Lew a slap on the arm.

“Hey!” protests Lew. “Guess you never heard about respecting your elders.”

“Sorry, Mr Nixon,” Hazy says. “But I’m sure you’ll live. Anyway, since you asked so nicely, I’m happy to tell you that I was visiting my aunt and uncle and cousins. Aunt married a French Canadian guy. It’s an interesting city. All the middle class speak English and all the workers speak French.”

“I’m sure that’s an oversimplification.”

“Well sort of, but there’s an actual divide between haves and have nots and they can barely even understand each other. Literally. Hell, I could barely understand the French either. It’s all nasal.”

“I’ve never been,” says Dick thoughtfully. “Suppose we could drive up there. Is it worth seeing?”

“Oh, it’s always interesting to visit just about anywhere new,” Hazy muses. “There’s always something to like. That’s the way I look at it.”

“Wouldn’t say that about some of the places we went to,” Lew says darkly.

“True, but we didn’t exactly see them in the best circumstances,” Dick reminds him. Nothing like being shot at to distract you from the scenery. Nothing like mortar rounds to rip the scenery up so there isn’t even anything left to look at. He remembers his trip to Paris and wants to laugh. Barely saw anything, just sat on the train and forgot where he was. He wished Lew had come. He probably would have been able to make some impression of the place if he’d been there in it.

Hazy ends up cooking something with mushrooms that she says is Chinese. Rather overdoes it with the spices. He feels like his mouth is on fire after it, but he appreciates the gesture, mops his flushed face and compliments her skills. She grins and takes the plates. When he goes into the kitchen he realises she’s not much of a tidy-as-you-go type, picks up the scrubbing brush and begins to work his way through it.

Before he’s finished running the water, he’s conscious of Hazy leaning against the cabinets beside him.

“So, Dick. How are you?”

“Oh, I’m very well. Thank you.”

“Sorry for startling you. I meant to say way back when we last visited. I feel like you had this nice cosy little set up and we came along and shook it.”

“Oh, I think sometimes people need to be shook up,” Dick replies. He plunges his hands into the rinse water. “Poor Lew had given up the hope of ever seeing him. Closed a door in his mind, I suppose. Was easier than constantly thinking about it.”

“Guess you must do that with a lot of things, huh?”

He gives her a steady look, eyebrows raised. “Oh yeah? Like what?”

“Oh, the war for instance. I’d say you being queer and all since it’s not like you go around saying it, but you don’t hide it either so that wouldn’t be correct.”

“Would you rather we said it?”

“Well, it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Hazy says. “Some of my best friends are.”

He chuckles. “You know, you remind me of my sister Ann. Which is funny because she’s nothing like you. She’s a lot more…”

“Polite?”

“Midwestern, I was going to say.”

Hazy grins. Decidedly not midwestern. Not just the pushy New Yorker thing, although that much is obvious by the way she doesn’t say r. Puts her in the same category as Mr Talbot, who goes about saying buttah and sugah and aftahnoon. Should put her and Talbot in the same room together and see what they come up with, Dick thinks, realising that Hazy is a catalyst he can throw in just about anywhere to make things happen.

Ann, though. Considerably more polite, yes, but she has the same spark deep down.

“She’s got kids of her own now,” Dick says. “Although I don’t see them that much.”

“She know about you, then?”

“Probably. But we’ve never talked about it.”

Hazy raises an eyebrow, a mirror of his own earlier expression.

“What can I say? Midwestern.”

“So no kids talking about Uncle Lew, then?”

“Guess not.”

“That’s a shame, he’d be a fun uncle. Break all the rules your sister sets, feed the kids a bunch of sugar and get them into trouble.”

“Sounds about right.”

“You’re probably more of a nice glass of milk and just one cookie uncle, and then you teach the kids how to whittle.”

“They’re a little old for that now,” Dick says, mentally calculating the ages of Howard and Joan. They wouldn’t be far behind Max, he realises, wishing he’d seen more of their childhood than letters and photos.

“Well I could go for a glass of milk right now,” says Hazy, and begins rummaging in cupboards looking for glassware. Dick can’t stop the smile starting on his face. “Leave the dishes. You aren’t getting out of French Canadian monopoly that easily.”

The next day they go into Corning for a film. Dick lets Lew pick, Lew defers to Max, Max defers to Hazy. They end up watching a bizarre and frankly alarming picture about a man who wants a different life, gets surgery to get a different face, only to find he hates the new life he’s now in. Rock Hudson’s good in it, he supposes, but the film leaves him uneasy. All about running away from responsibilities, and how it doesn’t end well. He wonders how Lew feels about it.

They can just about squeeze three in the truck but four’s a bridge too far so the kids are sitting in the tray. It’s mild enough weather and he drives carefully, mindful that they might get hit by flying stones or fall off. Lew tells him to speed up. “Give them a thrill.”

Turning back into Painted Post, they drive up the main street, and are coming up to the store, when Lew says “look” and points at the side of the building.

“What?”

“Someone’s written something.”  
He thinks of pulling in to look but as they get closer, it’s all too clear.

QUEERS.

Giant, white letters, scrawled in haste. Maybe overnight - they were facing the other way when they left for the movie and wouldn’t have seen it. Dick pulls in to the parking lot, and before he can even get out of the cabin Max and Hazy jump down.

“What the _hell,”_ Hazy’s saying, running around to the road verge, standing with hands braced on her thighs, mouth agape. He realises she’s furious. “What the hell!”

He tries to stay level-headed, although his first instinct is to get the hell out of there, just in case there are people lurking in the bushes to trap them. They could have taken them twenty years ago, maybe, but he’s tried his hardest to suppress those particular instincts, and Lew’s only got one arm.

Lew walks up to the wall, and peers at it. He seems rather calm. Almost amused, although Dick feels a rising panic, as if he’s been spotted by the MPs. Maybe they’re as good as finished here. Maybe they have to pack up and flee, go somewhere else, pretend they're brothers. Get married, even. He’s not sure about himself but he’s sure Lew can probably find a lonely widow or something. Hell, Dick thinks bitterly, he might even enjoy it.

He can’t help but notice that Max is frozen. Just standing there, his grey eyes staring into nothing, like he’s just been hit.

“Who the hell would write this?” Hazy demands, stomping over.

“Hazy,” he says evenly. “Don’t worry about it. This isn’t your fight.”

“The hell it isn’t!”

“Kid, I’m touched,” adds Lew, still inspecting the paintwork, “but he’s right. Don’t worry about it.”

“We have to paint over it! You got any paint? We can do it now - you got the keys on you? You go home, Max and I will do it. Max? Max!”

The kid still doesn’t do anything. Hazy grabs him by the shoulder and gives him a little shake. “Fuck’s sake, don’t you care?”

Caring’s not the problem. Dick can see now that he looks deeply uncomfortable. Alarmed even. Sure, it might be that he’s worried about guilt by association, but from the looks of it, it’s something else. A fear that this town is uglier than he thought, that it isn’t safe for Dick or Lew to live in. They don’t have the benefit of anonymity here. Everyone knows them, and if everyone’s drawn this conclusion, well…

He can see Max’s mind working, and then the kid finally opens his mouth and says thinly, “this isn’t good.”

“No shit, Max!"

“Maybe we should go.”

Just then, Lew steps away from the wall, walks back a few places, left hand in his pocket.

“You know what?” he says mildly. “Let’s leave it.”

The two young ones stare at him, dumbstruck.

“Lew,” he says slowly. “Hazy’s right, it’s not a good idea to have this on the side of our business.”

Lew makes a face, and then forcefully says “Why the hell not? It’s truth in advertising.”

“You can’t be serious,” he says, his voice harsh and low, touched by a tremble of worry. Lew’s already sacrificed more than he can count to be here. To have it all ruined right now would be - he can’t even begin to imagine.

“Dick. The way I see it, I’m not ashamed of it. I don’t care if anyone knows it. We’ve been here for seventeen fucking years. They can like it or lump it, and if they think they’re going to scare me off, well, too bad for them.”

“Dad,” ventures Max.

“Max, I’m a queer.” He gestures at Dick with a jab of his left arm. “He’s a queer. We both are. And I’m getting to the stage where I’m too old to give a shit if anyone has a problem with it.”

There’s not much he can find to say to that, even though the objections are still there. They get back into the truck and head home, all trapped in their own minds. Hazy gripes a little but realises the effort’s futile. Dick swallows down his worries and hopes that by some miracle, they’ve dreamed it all, and that come Monday morning it’ll all have resolved itself, and he’ll be back to being Dick Winters, friendly neighbourhood feed store proprietor, whose private life is his own.

In the middle of the night, he’s woken by a storm. Loud, crashing, sheets of rain. When he arrives at work and walks around the side of the building, his heart in his teeth, he finds the message has washed away to the point of illegibility. The paint mustn’t have been fully dry, and Lew was the only one who looked closely enough to find out.

——————

**Hazy Kendricks**

Ugh. Middle of the night. The familiar, spreading, stabbing pain, rolling from lower back to groin to thighs to ribs. Damn this shit. She tries lying there quietly, hoping the pain will get bored and go away. Tries rubbing her back, which helps a bit, but only as long as she keeps doing it. The pain is predictable but that doesn’t make it much better.

She struggles out of the bed and eases her way out of the room, quietly pads over to the toilet. Pisses out what seems to be a huge volume of blood and chunks, as per usual. Puts in a new tampon, chucks the old one in the bathroom bin. The light’s bright and horrible. Should have left it off. It feels wrong to be a snoop in someone else’s bathroom, but what’s the alternative? Pain medication, a hot water bottle, anything. She opens the little medicine cabinet, but only finds one dusty aspirin, which won’t do much. Opens the drawers, finds only bandages and first aid kit remnants, scissors, a dusty toiletries bag, two shaving brushes, nail files -

There’s a light, tentative knock on the bathroom door.

“Just a minute,” Hazy groans. Completes her search, and then goes to hand the bathroom over to someone else. Second look in the toilet just in case. Despite flushing there’s a puddle of dark red, sunk in the bottom beneath the water. She pulls the chain again, hoping the offending trace will leave.

When she opens the door, Dick is standing there in striped pyjamas, feet bare. He frowns a little to see her in there. No, not a frown. Concern.

“Hazy? Are you alright?”

She must look as bad as she feels for him to pick up on it. Dick motions downstairs.

“I can go down there if you’d prefer - just haven’t got around to replacing the bulb in the stair light yet.”

Hazy nods, shakes her head, grimaces, not even able to be consistent with her signals. The pain wells in her, and it’s awful, it’s just fucking awful.

“I’m fine,” she tells herself as much as him. “Actually, you wouldn’t happen to have a hot water bottle I could borrow?”

Dick looks thoroughly confused. “Oh, I’m sorry, we haven’t got one.”

Shit. She forgot there aren’t any women living in this house. Of course they wouldn’t have one.

“Oh. Well never mind then, it’s fine.”

He looks worried now. “Are you cold, Hazy? I can get you and Max an extra blanket if you like.” He gives his head a little shake. “I should have thought to leave an extra one in the room for you in case you needed it, but I guess I thought the weather was mild enough not to need it.” Before she can react, he’s stepped over and is touching her forehead with his palm. “Do you have a fever? You don’t feel hot -“

“Dick,” she hisses. “It’s not that.”

“Oh?”

Shit. To pussy-foot around it or to be direct? On the one hand he’s a polite man, not exactly one who peppers his speech with swear words, but on the other hand he went to war and is probably used to plain speaking. She decides the latter.

“It’s just my monthly visitor.” Hazy twists her grimace into a grin, as if to say “well what can ya do?” Add a little comedy to the proceedings, might make it more pleasant.

To his credit, Dick doesn’t colour that much. Just a brief flush of pink, and only the barest stammer. “Oh. I see.”

“A hot water bottle helps. That and pain meds, but they’re better in combination. Not great when it’s hot out but it’s the only thing that comes close to working.”

“Does it hurt much?” Dick asks tentatively.

“Depends on the individual,” Hazy says. “Or sometimes it hurts and sometimes it doesn’t.” She rubs her back to try and ease the awful sensation. “When it’s bad it can feel like you’re about to die, and the only thing that makes it vaguely bearable is knowing that at least it’s “supposed to happen” and that it’ll only last a couple of days. Until the next time.”

Dick makes a sympathetic face. “Oh, I had no idea it could get that bad. My mother never mentioned that particular detail.”

“Mothers usually don’t tell boys that sort of thing. It’s funny,” Hazy says, although it doesn’t seem so much funny as unfair, “men are expected to both know far better than we do about our own bodies and what we ought to do with them, while also being so delicate that they can’t possibly be told what we go through on a monthly basis.”

To her surprise, Dick’s mouth twitches into a wry sort of grin. “Does Max know?”

“Oh yeah, I straight-up told him that if he wants to date me, he can’t be squeamish about the reality of my body.”

“That’s a good strategy to have,” Dick says.

“Well, some women hide it all from their husbands, but I’m not going to be sneaking around disposing of evidence and trying to plaster on a big happy smile so he doesn’t know I feel like my insides are about to fall out.”

“I’m sorry I can’t get you anything.” Dick sighs. “At least not tonight. I’ll drive you in to the pharmacy tomorrow first thing.”

“Thanks,” says Hazy warmly, dimly registering the funniness of the situation. Her boyfriend’s father’s boyfriend fussing over her period pains in the middle of the night like a sympathetic mom. It’d only be funnier if he went ahead and offered -

“How about we come down to the kitchen and I warm up some milk for you?” Dick adds, and Hazy can’t suppress a snort of laughter.

“You’re a treasure, you know,” she says, sitting at the table in warm, milky steam, cupping the hot drink in her hands. She thinks about asking Dick if he’ll put a dash of whiskey in it for her, but that seems like more of a Lew thing.

“Well, anything I can do, please don’t hesitate” Dick says, giving her a little pat on the shoulder. “I’m going to head back to bed now. Goodnight, Hazy. Hope you feel a little better in the morning.”

“Goodnight, Dick,” says Hazy, and watches him shuffle carefully up the darkened stairs, the house around them as still and dark as a mouse’s burrow.

They’re squeezed around the kitchen table having breakfast - funny thing about this house having a dining room: no one seems to use it. She had to dust the table when she cooked dinner a few nights before, it was that abandoned.

Hazy’s wearing a dull, comfortable dress, the sort of thing her mother might wear around the house, because damn trying to be chic when you’re feeling so mediocre. Max and Dick look infuriatingly alert. Lew is basically face-down in his own cereal.

“Max,” begins Dick, busying himself with the preparation of cheese sandwiches. “I’ve got to make a few deliveries of pullets today. Would it be Ok if you helped?”

“Oh, uh - sure,” Max says, looking distinctly concerned about the whole thing.

“What are pullets?” Hazy adds, thinking the word sounds disconcertingly like a jokier version of bullets.

“Young lady hens about to make their debut,” Lew growls, clumsily spooning cereal with his left hand.

“That’s right,” Dick says, washing up the breadknife. “A couple of hundred lovely young ladies, brown and black and white feathered, off to their new happy homes. And if they’re not young ladies then I’ll have to swap them out for ones that are.”

“Does that happen often?” Hazy asks.

“Oh, from time to time. You can never be one hundred percent sure until they reach maturity. The odd surprise sneaks in.”

“Oh. I thought hens and roosters looked pretty different.”

Lew snorts. “Not until they’re adults. Before that, well, it’s not as if roosters have anything between their legs you can see with a quick once-over.”

“To change the subject for a moment,” Dick says smoothly, before anyone has a chance to contribute to Lew’s barnyard talk, “would you like to come and see the young ladies? Maybe help me pick out a couple to add to our own flock?” This remark directed at Hazy.

“Uh, no thanks,” Hazy says, even though part of her’s curious. She’s never been up close with a chicken before, at least not one still living, and a hundred of them must be dizzying. “I think I’d better stay home.”

“Oh!” Dick suddenly interjects. “I made it to the pharmacy this morning, got you what you asked for.”

Lew and Max give her confused looks.

“Thanks!” says Hazy, even though it's not so much the hot water bottle as the gesture. Although the hot water bottle’s a real fucking godsend, which you don’t realise until you don’t have one.

“You’re welcome, I left it in the bathroom.”

The two leave, off to go and drive around the pullets, and Hazy goes to fill the hot water bottle. She walks into the front room, holding the towel-wrapped bottle to her front, a familiar smell of hot rubber following her, and flops down on the sofa opposite Lew, who’s frowning over a novel in one of the unfashionable armchairs. She takes the newspaper out from under her arm and opens it out to the crossword, unhooking her glasses from her neckline and putting them on. Lew looks up.

“I remember my sister doing that.”

For a minute she thinks he’s referring to the crossword, but his eyes are on the hot water bottle.

“How you feeling?” Hazy asks. He doesn’t exactly look thrilled about being laid up at home. Not to mention the whole….incident. The sign might have washed away, but it’s not that easy to forget.

“Bored, mostly.” A grumbling sigh. “In the past I would have filled the time with a visit to the drinks cabinet, but I’ve worked hard enough to suppress that particular impulse that I’m not going to start now.” His face twists into a pained grin. “Besides, it’s empty anyway, except for a bottle of cooking marsala, and I’m not _that_ desperate.”

“Hey,” says Hazy hurriedly. “You know that if you and Dick need to leave here in a hurry, you can come to New York? I’m happy to put you up.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Lew says gently, “but it won’t be necessary. Dick and I will be just fine here.”

She hopes they haven’t lost their friends. Do they _have_ friends? They don’t seem much for socialising outside of the two of them, but that’s not unusual for people their age. Some of her friends’ parents in school seemed glued to the sofa when she visited.

Still, with this cramp, being glued to the sofa seems pretty appealing.

“You want to help me do the cryptic?”

“Sure, if you like.” She reads him out one of the clues. Lew frowns like a grumpy bear, and then comes up with several possibilities. “You’ll have to write them in though.” He wiggles his two non-plastered fingers. “Haven’t got the knack of ambidextrousness yet. Maybe it’ll come in a couple of weeks.”

“So, you’ve got a sister,” Hazy says. “Max have much to do with his aunt?”

Lew shrugs. “How should I know? Probably not though, I got disowned, and by extension he did too. Still, Blanche is her own woman, she could call if she wanted.”

“Maybe she hasn't got your number anymore,” Hazy reminds him. “She might not know you’re living in a village.”

She gets the sense that Lew comes from money, some kind of WASPy fancy pedigree, but Max doesn’t seem to her like some kind of heir. Lew, on the other hand, sometimes seems like a fallen rake, even if he seems for the most part content to be living in the middle of nowhere covered in hay dust, instead of at some sparkling cocktail party.

“How’d that happen, by the way?” she prods.

Lew raises an eyebrow. “What, the disownment? Or me living here?”

“The disownment.”

Lew grins sardonically. “Anyone tell you you’re a busybody?”

“Oh please,” Hazy says. “I bet you love being asked all this stuff outright. Sure beats having people giving you weird looks and drawing their own false conclusions.”

“Well.” He puts the novel down, not that he’d been reading it for the past few minutes. “Just so you know, Max isn’t going to inherit anything.”

“Wasn’t expecting him to.”

“Well, I mean he can have the feed store if Dick and I suddenly drop dead, but I’m hoping that won’t be for a good while.”

“Funnily enough I’m not pursuing your son out of a desire for grand riches,” Hazy says, without pointing out that a feed store is the probably the last thing Max wants, especially since having it would mean his father is dead.

“Good,” Lew says shortly, but he doesn't seem like he has any ill-feeling towards her. Just being blunt, which Hazy appreciates. She decides to give him the same courtesy in return.

“You didn’t tell me why.”

“Why what?”

“Why you got kicked out of your grand mansion.” She fixes him with a steady look, although the reading glasses are giving her the wrong focal length for steady looks. “Was it because you’re a -“

Before she has time to finish the sentence, Lew’s dark eyes are on her, a strong, fixed gaze like that of an examiner.

“Yes, Hazy, it’s because of that. I got mad one Thanksgiving and told my father I took it up the ass.”

What?! Hazy lets out a surprised yelp.

Well she wasn’t expecting _that,_ more like his mother discovering a romantic letter or both parents growing suspicious about a guy he kept hanging around.

“Yep. All went from there,” Lew continues, seemingly relishing her startled expression. “Told my father my proclivities, I lose my job, I get kicked out, I get Dick and I another job by essentially blackmailing my father into giving us a reference, we move to Corning, my ex wife and son get kicked out of the family by extension although she’s damned happy about it because they weren’t exactly fun people to be around, Blanche’s son becomes the new heir instead of Max, my ex’s new husband finds out I’m an unrepentant sodomite and decides probably due to his own inferiority complex that I can’t see Max anymore, years pass, and then you and Max end up showing up on our doorstep. That everything? Yep. Think that’s everything.”

She can’t help herself. Starts laughing, and Lewis is catching her eye and he starts laughing too, a deep, resonant chuckle that then resolves into a giggle, and tears are streaming down her face and then she’s laughing so hard she’s coughing, which takes a couple of minutes to resolve. Fucking hell! That’s _not_ the conversation she’d ever expected to have with the guy who may as well be her father-in-law.

“So why Hazy, then?” Lew asks suddenly.

“Why’s anyone called anything?” She’s busy trying out one of Lew’s suggestions in fourteen across, and it turns out he’s right. Not that that was much of a surprise.

“Point taken,” he says.

“When I was in elementary school I got a reputation from the teachers for daydreaming. Staring into space instead of focussing on my silent reading. Holding the book really far away from my face, holding it really close. Teacher thought I was mucking around. Turns out I just needed glasses.”

“Huh. Prosaic,” Lew says. “Guessing it stuck.”

“There was another Molly in my class all through elementary school, different spelling, but yep, it stuck. Better than being Mollie K and Molly B, that’s for sure. You ever have a nickname?”

“Not a really good one that anyone thought much about. Dick and the guys always used to call me Nix.”

“Imaginative.”

“Lot of the guys had nicknames in our battalion. There was this one guy who insisted on being called Babe, and the funny thing was, nobody ever thought to ask him why.”

Hazy grins. “Cute.”

“Yeah, it was, we were all going around going “hey Babe, you alright? Babe, can you take those guys over there?” He smirks. “Wouldn’t have taken a lot of imagination to make a joke about him being everyone’s gal, but we ignored the implications, which was even funnier.”

“So what happened to Babe?” says Hazy, dreading the answer.

“Oh, he made it.” Lewis smiles. “Not that I want to throw anyone under the bus, but hell, you’ll never know the guy probably, so I think he’ll forgive me, but he ended up being _somebody’s_ gal, if you know what I mean. Last time I checked he was living with the company medic in New Orleans. Sent them a bunch of flowers once.”

Hazy grins. “Well with that detail, now I _do_ want to meet him. You got his address? I’ll write him, see how he’s doing.”

“Oh hell you won’t,” retorts Lew, grinning. “Some people like their privacy.”

“You mean the guy who went around begging everyone to call him Babe?”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you wanted to meet me just cause you like queers so much. Makes me think you are one.”

Hazy raises her eyebrows mockingly. “I might be.”

“Well, you’re with my son, so that makes you…”

“Half and half, of a sort.” Not that she’s done much about that. It’s not as easy with girls, especially when there’s a set pattern of behaviour you can just fall into when you’re with a boy. The very pattern society models. Takes more effort to push against that, and in the end, Max trumps any girl or boy she might have angled for. 

“Ha,” Lew says. “Well, so am I.”

And yet he ended up with a man. To push against the status quo like that, when he didn’t really have to…

Well, he must have really felt it.

Lew doesn’t ask her further questions, nor go into an explanation, just lets it sit, confident that Hazy will be comfortable with it. She respected him already, but now? Well. She couldn’t think more highly of him.

“So, you clearly had some ideas about meeting me for whatever reason. Max told me that you were the one who insisted on driving out here in the first place.”

“Guilty as charged,” says Hazy, trusting that Lew isn’t going to get offended. “I thought a queer dad would be kinda fun to meet. My Dad’s divorced too and he’s not queer, and that’s significantly less interesting.”

“Oh?” says Lew, raising one of those magnificent eyebrows.

“Yeah, he just couldn’t keep his pants on with women and my Mom got sick of it. Tale as old as time. But in case you’re wondering, I wasn’t trying to meet you out of anthropological fascination alone. You’re not the first one I’ve met or anything. Other than myself, I mean. I’m friends with a couple of guys, actually. Max, on the other hand, didn’t even know they were together. ”

Lew grins. “Sounds like Dick, actually. I basically had to spell it out for him before he figured it out. Some people just aren’t very perceptive.” He gets up from the armchair, dumps his book on it, and heads in the direction of the kitchen. “I’m going to make coffee, you want anything?”

“With one arm?”

“Yeah, I’m at least ambidextrous with a coffee maker.”

“Alright then,” Hazy says, and turns back to the crossword. “And then you can come here and help me figure this out, because I’ve just realised I can’t really remember how you’re supposed to do cryptics. Should have done the quick.”

—————-

**Lewis Nixon**

When Max lifts the shirt over his head and shakes it free from his arm, first right, then left, catching around his watch, something pale catches Lew’s eye. Silvery lines of scarring, two or maybe three, strong white lines spanning the underside of his left forearm. Oh _no_ , not him, to think his son could be brought so low -

“Max,” he says, the name a shudder escaping him. The young man in front of him looks up, surprised. He realises the expression of bewilderment looks familiar. That same line of the brow. It’s what he feels on his own face, what he sees in the mirror.

Max’s mouth opens, forming a question, his eyes flicking to Lew’s, following his gaze, and then his mouth suddenly twitches into a smile that’s so like his mother, caught unawares by a joke, mad at Lew but unable to look away from the funny side.

“Milk bottles, Dad,” Max says, holding out his forearm.

Relief rushes up in him. He braces his hands on his knees and lets out a whoosh of breath. “Oh thank God.”

“You thought I’d tried to -“

“Yeah,” Lew exhales, “yeah, I did for a minute there.”

Max gives him that odd twisted smile again, Kathy’s smile. “Don’t worry, Dad, my life was never _that_ unhappy.”

 _Yeah well mine was,_ Lewis thinks, _at times,_ although he never had those thoughts exactly, at least not with that method. No, even at his lowest ebbs, his preferred style of suicide was a slower one. Through the liver. 

He can’t quite help but think Max might still have had the saddest life a kid could have, but at least he has the assurance that he didn’t try and bring it to an early end. Gave himself the chance to make it better, at least. Might even let Lewis tag along for part of it.

“How’d it happen?” Lew finds himself saying, trying to cover up his sudden wave of feeling by propelling the conversation forward.

“Typical little kid accident,” Max says, forcing one shoe off with the point of the other. “Went round the corner too fast on my new bike, milk had just been delivered, and the milk and I had an unexpected meeting.”

“Ouch.” Lew can’t help wincing. Once again, he’s astonished by what little kids survive on a daily basis. Their own little rough and tumble wars.

“I think the blood shocked me more than the actual injury. You know, you think “ow, that hurts a bit, time to ask for a bandaid” and then you’re holding a handful of your own blood and you start screaming for Mom.” He shakes his head, still grinning a little, as if he can’t quite believe the memory. Lew imagines Kathy stepping in with kind words and bandages - no matter the disagreements they had, she was a good Mom. But the illusion is shattered when Max continues. “Mom was out. So I got Pa instead.”

He shakes out the picnic blanket and Lew sits down cautiously on the uneven ground. Can’t really plonk yourself down when you’ve only got one arm to steady yourself with. Can’t hurl yourself every which way now you’re getting old.

Max settles down beside him with considerably more ease. Lew’s surprised he doesn’t walk to the water, anecdote over, but instead his son looks at him thoughtfully, as if considering what Lew might have done had he seen his son screaming, blood running into his cupped palm and dripping through his fingers. 

Probably screamed himself, Lew thinks. To call it an unpleasant reminder of some of the worst things he’d seen would be putting it mildly.

“And what’d he do?” Lew asks quietly.

Max huffs out a little laugh. “He patched me up, but I was crying the whole time, and he didn’t know what to do with that, I guess. Not really one for doling out kisses and cuddles to a stepson.”

Lew tries to stop himself from making a face. He fails. Far be it for him to criticise another man’s parenting, when he’s probably only been present for a combined year of Max’s twenty five years on earth. “That’s rough,” he ends up saying. “I’m sorry.” _Sorry I wasn’t there,_ he means, although he can’t begin to explain why he wasn’t. God knows what Kathy has told him.

“You know,” says Max thoughtfully. “I think that incident was the last straw for him. With you.”

What?

Lew waits for him to continue, hardly daring to take a breath.

“It happened just after you came for my birthday, and so I remembered you pretty clearly, and what I remember the most was that when I got a scrape you sat with me and cheered me up, didn’t just say “stop crying,” but actually gave me a reason to stop crying. Made it all better, just like Mom would’ve. Well, turns out Pa didn’t have the knack for that, and when I as good as told him he went through the roof.”

Hell of a thing for a five year old to articulate, Lew thinks.

“I remember looking at him and thinking “he doesn’t even like me, why can’t I live with someone who does?” And that’s when I said “I want to stay with Dad and Uncle Dick.”

He feels the jolt of emotion like an involuntary spasm, even if all he’s hearing is the long-ago wish of a child in pain. His own father was the last one he’d ever go to, and to think that even though he wasn’t there, Max might have wanted him to be - oh God, he doesn’t know if that’s better than worse than thinking the kid spent a childhood in blissful ignorance of him, unable to remember him at all.

“And he didn’t like that. No. Not at all.” Max closes his eyes for a minute. “Fought with Mom after that. I don’t remember what he said, but it wasn’t _complimentary.”_

“I can imagine,” Lewis says unnecessarily, feeling like he needs to add something so Max knows he’s still listening.

“And after that I never saw you again.” He’s looking at Lewis, with a steady, grave look, the serious look Kathy used to get when she said _Lewis, we need to talk._ To his shame he always fobbed her off. “Always thought - maybe if I hadn’t said that, maybe he wouldn’t have, well. Been so strict about it.”

Lew sighs. “Max, don’t blame yourself for it. I think we all made bad decisions at that time, and you ended up wearing it.” _I’m sorry,_ he wants to say, but knows the words can’t touch the sides of how he feels about it all.

“I think it’s mostly on Pa, though.”

He’s not even going to comment on that, no matter how many times he imagined smashing Fred Royston’s smug farm-securities face in.

“He wasn’t that bad a father,” Max adds, almost as an afterthought. “No. He was adequate. Just sometimes, that’s worse than bad.”

“Yeah,” says Lew, with a nasty feeling in him. “Guess I was the bad one.”

“Dad. Don’t be like that.”

“Don’t be like what, Max? Honest?” God, the last thing he wants is his son complimenting him on what a good job he did by being there for him for about five minutes once.

“I’d like to remind you what I wanted back then. I took one look at my stepfather, who’s grabbing me by the arm and calling me a sissy, and I said _I want to stay with my Dad and uncle Dick_ , and I _did_.”

He’s warmed by that, but instead of saying something normal and sweet, like _you were a good kid,_ or _I love you son_ , what falls out of his mouth at that moment is -

“You’re very kind, Max, but you don’t have to keep calling him that. He’s not your real uncle, just so you know.”

A huff of exasperation. He looks over and Max is giving him this frustrated look that he knows from experience comes only from the ones you love. The ones you don’t love just deck you, or sneer and walk off, not willing to waste their time on Lewis Nixon III when he’s got his guard up, has had too many drinks or is just plain antsy and self-defeating and awful to be around.

“I know, Dad. But I don’t think you called him that cause you thought I was dumb, I think you called him that cause it was the best you could do. And that’s why I call him that. Because I can’t find another way of saying what he means to you.”

He wants to sob just then.

“And don’t feel too bad for me getting stuck with Pa.”

“I didn’t,” Lew says with a false gruffness. “You turned out great.” _Without me. I’m sure I would have just stuffed it up._

“He might not have been the best,” Max continues, “but he dotes on Lucy, and he always showed up for me. And besides, if I find myself on the therapist couch going on about my withholding stepdad, the guy’s going to try pull the old Absent Father trick on me and he’s going to find out it doesn’t work.” He grins at Lew, a reflection of Lewis Nixon’s old cheeky grin from twenty-five years earlier. “Cause at the end of the day I’ve got three Dads, and most people have to be happy with just one.”

Lewis lurchingly pulls him into a hug.

His plastered arm and fingers are pressed between them, and it’s awkward and must be rough on Max’s bare chest, and they’re on unsteady ground and leaning sideways and he’s probably not doing the right thing for a fatherly hug anyway, should give him some stern pats on the back, but he doesn’t know an awful lot about giving or receiving fatherly hugs as it turns out, so this will have to do. And Max hugs back. That’s good enough.

Lew releases him and says “You going to swim, or just sit around talking to your old Dad all afternoon?”

“Are _you_ going to swim?” retorts Max cheekily.

“Can’t,” Lew reminds him, gesturing with the plastered arm. “You know, I managed to get through a whole goddamn war without more than a few scratches, and then I go and fall off the goddamn -“

“Yeah, yeah, we know, Dad, you’ve complained about it often enough.” Max grins. “So what are you going to do instead? You could stick your feet in.”

“I’ll sit here and smoke, try and blow a few smoke rings like Gandalf the Grey.”

“Ha! You _are_ reading it!” Max laughs.

“It’s pretty good!” Lew affects a defensive, wounded tone. “You know, once I got past those infernal family trees of what hobbit begat what hobbit - it’s like reading Dick’s bible, yes, before you ask he was almost what you could call a bible basher when I met him, mellowed out a bit but he does love a letter to the corinthians or some other such thing, but -“

A shout behind him, and the sound of Hazy scrambling down the track, holding aloft a shopping bag.

“Hey, I got snacks!”

She dumps the bag down on the picnic blanket between the two of them, and before Lew’s even had a chance to go through it and sees what kind of flavour of chips Max’s girlfriend favours, she’s kicking off her shoes, pelting past them, stumbling on roots, feet sinking into mud, and then plunging into the lake like a bolting horse, shrieking merrily, dress whipping out behind her. She comes up, hair plastered darkly to her forehead, forgotten mascara dripping. “Max! You going to sit up there forever?”

“You keep hold of that one,” Lew says, feeling warm with humour. “Don’t take after your old man.”

“Don’t worry Dad,” Max says, getting to his feet. “I will.”

——————-

**Dick Winters**

It seems like ages since the kids were there. Didn’t end up having to hire any help for the store after all, seeing as their customers dropped off a bit after what he supposes must have been some kind of mass revelation by the people in the town that those two fellows who lived together for seventeen years probably weren’t just friends. But it’s not too bad. He keeps his head up, and after a while the customers start trickling back in, even if they’re not as fond of chatting as they were before.

“See,” Lew says, shelving tins with one arm. “Turns out we weren’t contagious.”

Autumn’s already starting, and he realises with alarm that Max’s birthday has been and gone and he was too distracted to wish him the best. That evening he raises this fact to Lew, who gives him an _are you kidding me_ look. “I rung him,” he says slowly. “Don’t you remember?”

Dick does not, in fact remember. Had a few bad dreams at the end of August, and they’ve done a real number on his recall.

“Rung him and sent him a card,” Lew says. “To be honest I think he was glad to go.” He chuckles. “Think he sticks out like a sore thumb in Painted Post even more than I do.”

“He loves you, you know,” Dick says.

“Yeah yeah, if you say so,” Lew replies, but he can see he’s touched. After spending so long together, it’s easy enough to read him, and to him that handsome face is an open book, expressions written in eyebrows and lashes and the set of his mouth.

“Oh, and Dick?”

“Yes?” Now the kids aren’t here, there’s nothing to stop him walking over and tipping up his face and kissing him, feeling Lew’s smile against his mouth, the gentle rasp of his stubble on his lip.

“You’re good with them. You would have made a good father.”

“Well it’s too late to start now,” Dick says, feeling slightly leaden. Sure, having kids isn’t a picnic from what he’s heard, and it wasn’t exactly possible - not without a great deal of unhappiness on his part, and possibly leaving Lew to his own devices, which would have been even worse. That, or snatching brief bits of him on weekends, which would have been more torturous than nothing at all.

Lew shrugs, smiles. “Well, if those two get as early a start as I did on the whole kid thing, I’ll angle to make you a godfather.”

That’d be nice, Dick thinks. It’s odd, feeling you’re passing the baton on to the next generation. Feels like yesterday when he was back from war, every day a “now what?” The only certainty being in the arms of the man in front of him.

“Oh, almost forgot,” says Lew suddenly, and walks into the dining room. He comes back bearing a large parcel wrapped in brown paper. “This came today.”

The return address says Hazy Kendricks, New York.

“You want to do the honours?” Dick says.

“Better not,” Lew says warningly. “I’ve only got one arm.”

Dick gives him a withering look and goes to fetch a penknife in case they need it. He gets the string undone first, working the knots with his fingernails. No sense cutting it, even though Lew would. A little string always comes in handy. 

“I’m sure that fastidiousness wasn’t what Hazy intended,” Lew says, perched on the arm of the sofa, watching. When Dick gets to the paper, easing the penknife under the tape (who ties a parcel and then tapes it?) Lew utters a sound of frustration, grabs the parcel and clumsily rips the paper away in fistfuls.

“What is it?” Some kind of large plank?

Lew turns the board over and crows with delight. “It’s a sign!”

A sign? Oh, of course. A literal sign. Beautifully painted - must be a professional job, with flowing down and upstrokes, clever shadowing to each letter. Gold letters, black surround. The writing itself is flamboyant enough that it takes Dick a while to recognise the letters, and when he does - he lets out a stammered laugh, because Hazy’s sign, professionally painted, the kind of thing you’d have behind a bar, Hazy’s sign says _Queers._

Lew’s poring through the shreds of the wrapping. He comes away with a note.

“Ha! Get this. _Dear Dick and Lew, hope you are well and all that, thank you very much for having Max and I. I know Lew wanted to keep the side of the building intact, but in my opinion, it lacked aesthetic value. So I contacted my friend Carl, who did a bit of sign painting in Wichita with his Dad before he came here, and I got this done for you both. Rather flash, don’t you think? Consider it a housewarming, seventeen years too late. Stick it in your store if you like, it’s much better than the other one._

_Much love -_

_Hazy.”_

Lew’s barely finished the letter before he’s erupting in laughter. “That girl - god, I have the urge to introduce her to everyone I used to know, just to see their faces.” He admires the sign. “It’s perfect.”

Dick grins. The sign’s so stupid but at the same time it’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever given them. “Consider it a housewarming, she says.” He takes the sign from Lew so he can get a better look at the handiwork. “Would you really have left the graffiti?”

“Not sure,” Lew says. “In the moment it seemed like the right thing to do. But we didn’t have to make that decision, did we?”

They kiss again, and Dick forgets about the sign, forgets about everything except Lewis Nixon in his arms.

Now that’s perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to do a "townspeople start getting suspicious" fic for a while now, so here it is! This is sort of inspired by a novel called Hide. Not because I liked that book, but the exact opposite. I HATE that book. In that book, two men who don't even seem to like each other very much are living this extremely secretive life at a farm on the outskirts of a town in the southern US, and they have massively compromised their life and their relationships with their family and their ability to have friends so that they can keep their homosexuality secret. I read this book and had the overwhelming thought that by acting so secretive, they would have actually made people *more* suspicious. It wasn't unheard of for two women or two men to just...live together, and people not think too hard about it because the idea of homosexuality just didn't really occur to them, or because people thought 'none of my business." Of course the worst kinds of homophobia existed, and still exist, but there's a lot more variation in attitudes and human experience.  
> Anyway, the book is about two WW2 vets living together during the rest of the 20th century and since I read it I wanted to write the anti-Hide, where the guys don't spend an inordinate amount of time concealing that they live together. Turns out this fandom is perfect for that, as it's set in exactly the same time period, so I get to explore a different take on the same scenario.
> 
> Please do not interpret this as an accurate representation of Painted Post! I haven't ever been there. I have, however, been to Montreal. In the early 20th century and earlier Mont Royal was regarded as a giant hookup spot (not just cruising, but for straight people also.) They actually cut back a lot of the trees in the 1950s to prevent people fucking in the bushes. This had the effect of causing a lot of erosion! Great job, City of Montreal. 
> 
> As far as I know there's no specific French Canadian monopoly, but I assume there was a French language version, which is what Hazy is referring to. 
> 
> And finally, I found out in the course of writing this that ibuprofen was not yet on the market in the US in the 1960s! Hence why poor Hazy has to be content with aspirin, which does absolute zip for cramps.


End file.
